Guest from the future
by bhut
Summary: With the three fifths of the ARC's team still trapped in the past, Becker and Sarah have their hands full in the Canadian wilderness...
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All character, unless stated otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter 1**

"Ah, the Canadian North – even in summer it is barely hospitable to human settlement and inhabitation, and those self-proclaimed 'fans' of the 'great outdoors' would be probably pressed hard to explain precisely what was so great about this place, as opposed to, say, the Niagara peninsula, or-"

"Clark? Shut up."

The two men in the RCMP scout uniformed seemed to have nothing in common, except for their equipment and similar get-up. Clark Hill (no relation to Clark Kent, as he would always be eager to point out) was just over five feet in height, his naturally pale hair dyed in colours of reddish and black shades, his dark eyes rather small and beady, like a squirrel or a rat's, located over a rather upturned nose and a short and scruffy moustache – to be brief, he looked mostly like a teenager who had just hit puberty, and no one else. In contrast, Grant Brook was around six feet in height, wore his dark black hair in a long ponytail, and had a face that seemingly had come straight from the Classic Roman senate but was now staying on top of a very powerfully built body instead.

And yet, despite the apparent mismatch of the pair, Clark and Grant worked well enough together, and often became a team – certainly more often than not, as the pair probably had the highest and the most detailed knowledge of the local landscape, as well as its' natural history and nature in general. And since their boss was never the one to hold back when there was good PR to be had, he often sent his best men – namely, Clark and Grant – onto missions together, to double the chances of success and good publicity.

And such was the case now, really. The case seemed to be nothing grand or serious – just some missing animals made worse by a surge in local hysteria, yet the chief sent Clark and Grant apparently just for some good publicity, saying that if it is serious, the two of them were the best to handle it, and if it wasn't, then they would have no problem wrapping it all up.

"So, let's recap," Grant turned to his partner, looking down due to his height. "Some time ago the chief began to receive complaints and reports about missing animals – pets, poultry, and even some horses – from this area. This was intermixed with reports and rumours of big dogs or dog-shaped animals – in other words, still dogs, the only question being here is: are they feral – strays, lost by campers, etc – or are being released on purpose?"

"You forget the reports about signs of dead or harassed wildlife, from moose and caribou down to fox and hare," Clark said calmly, looking rather sober by his standards. "And also the trapper reports, about the disabled, destroyed or emptied traps, complete with oversized footprints of dogs next to them."

"Some canny bastard figured that fancy shoes will make him smarter to catch, and, possibly, has several trained dogs on his side – or her side, I suppose. Got to give kudos to the political correctness and all," Grand replied mildly.

"Yeah, yeah, political correctness and all – it certainly didn't stop the natives going on about the Wendigo and-"

"Werewolves, Clark, the reports mentioned werewolves, not the Wendigo."

"Oh, that's right – why did I think about the Wendigo?.."

It was at that moment that the wind has changed direction again, once more somewhat scattering the local species of native gnats and horseflies, bringing to the RCMP agents' the sound of human speech – "the Wendigo, the Wendigo, its' colour's pink and indigo, its' hands are long and rubbery, it can look like just like shrubbery" – and the smell of cheap booze, poteen even.

"Well!" Clark said acidly to his partner, as the wind shifted again, now carrying away the smell of booze and drunken singing, "guess the locals' fear of the werewolf or whatever may have been a tad exaggerated, wouldn't you say, Big G?"

"I'll handle it," Grant shrugged, looking at the tight smile of his partner. "There is no reason for unnecessary violence or cruelty on this mission yet."

"Yeah, but what it's our boy?" the voice on the wind has been clearly masculine.

"Nah, it doesn't quite fit the profile – if it is the boy, and not some local or trapper, celebrating his success or mourning his loss so early in the afternoon."

"Oh fine, fine, you can go," Clark wrinkled his stubby nose. "Just give the fellow the brief one and get back – we still have to figure out where to set tonight's ambush and the like."

Grant replied just by silently rolling his eyes and vanished in the Canadian boreal forest around them with hardly any sound, as it was their hard-engrained habit. Clark shrugged in reply and began to re-read their map, ignoring the buzzing of the flies and gnats, and thinking about his latest girlfriend instead. This activity was very consuming in terms of mental power by Clark's standards, and so he kind of lost track of time, until a particularly persistent vermin bit him right behind one of his ears, causing him to snap out of it – and slap at it – hard.

"Whoa!" he said slowly. "It's been over half an hour, eh, Grant? Grant?" His partner was still absent, and though the drunkard wasn't singing out his damn ditty about the Wendigo either, but the smell of cheap poteen on the wind came on stronger than ever. "What the Hell – you are having a drinking party out there?!"

Despite Clark's sarcasm, he knew that something was wrong – Grant was never the one to be distracted by cheap poteen or any other kind of equally cheap entertainment (unlike Clark himself, actually), he should've been back by now, if the drunk was as drank as he pretended to be.

Therefore – his frown deepening by the minute – he put the map into the pocket and followed the path that his partner had taken earlier. It was relatively easy going – the heavily conifer forest had little in terms of undergrowth to slow down a man even one as short as Clark and the path was going down at a sharp angle as well, so the main trick was to keep at it slowly, rather than quickly, and that was something that Clark hadn't had any problems with at all – and the path evened out somewhat, and Clark didn't have even that problem anymore, and all he had was to go along slowly, warily, hiding behind tree trunks and keeping a sharp look-out for anything suspicious, like the potential drunkard who was nowhere in sight, even though the smell of alcohol was coming up stronger than ever, although Clark's trained nose could now detect a different scent underlying the poteen's reek – blood.

Slowly, with every ounce of skill at stalking that he ever had and then some, Clark made his way through the forest floor. Everything around him quiet, save for several birds chirping in the higher tree branches above him, and a small owl looking at him with its' unblinking yellow gaze. "How lovely," Clark muttered, as he momentarily stared back at the owl and then turned back towards the direction from which the smells of trouble apparently originated. "Grant, I swear, if you're not in trouble, I will make you wish that you were-"

Clark froze, and his mutterings vanished into the silence, as before him the tree line of the forest slowly parted to form a clearing, and at its' other end was Grant. Or, to be more precise, the remains of Grant, primarily his upper torso, arms and shoulders, and his head hanging on the tip of some monumental bony hook or axe, even as the rest of him was lying scattered around the clearing in gory strips.

"No!" Clark whispered and whirled around, his every intent now being to run for help and/or contact their HQ before it was too late – but it was too late. As he turned around, he came face to face with-

"The wendigo!" Clark exclaimed, caught flat-footed and unawares probably for the first time in a long while, as his assailant slammed into him, easily bringing the much smaller man down in a hard tackle. But that, however, was the last thing that Clark Hill has ever uttered, as the wendigo, or whatever it was, tore out his throat instead.

The next moment the Canadian woods around or rather above the second corpse resonated with howls and crazy laughter – something new has arrived in the Holocene era, something that didn't truly belong here...

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All character, unless stated otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter 2**

"What do you mean, you have no idea where they currently are?!" James Lester's voice echoed all over the lower floor of the ARC. "We're talking about bloody Danny Quinn and the last two remnants of the original Scooby Gang, Daphne and Shaggy, I swear!!"

Sarah Page just gulped. It was all right for Becker to just stand there with a professional look upon his face, but she currently just didn't feel so professional at all, and more like a much chastised child in kindergarten or maybe a first or second grader...

"Ms. Page!" James erupted once again. "Can you at least try to pay attention like captain Becker does next to you? He, at least, seems to be regretful at what has been done."

"Yes sir," Sarah killed her inner urge to shuffle her feet. "I'll remember to do that from now on."

"Mmmph!" James Lester groaned. "Ms. Page, are you doing this on purpose? We're having a tragedy here, and you-"

It was when the time anomaly alarm began to wail loudly and whiningly, as if it was also aware – on a program level – that its' creator (namely Connor Temple) was no longer among them, or rather not yet among them, as he was currently stuck several dozen million of years in the past, back when the dinosaurs walked on the Earth and were the planet's true masters.  
And speaking of dinosaurs...

"Sir?" Lester's secretary Lorraine looked out of the man's office, "there's a big disturbance at the Heathrow, and the witnesses claim that it's a dinosaur of some sort!"

There was just a pause as Lester just wordlessly looked at Becker and Sarah, and the pair just looked back at him. For several moments the trio just kept silent, until silence was finally broken by Lester. "Becker, what are you looking at?" he spat out in a curt tone of voice. "Take your men and Ms. Page and go there – go, get out of my sight until the job is done! Go!!"

Becker and Sarah fled.

* * *

Jenny Lewis was cold. She was cold and her relatively thin blankets didn't offer any comfort either, so, consequently, all she could do was get out of bed and slam the window shut – the key words here being 'get out of bed', for when Jenny Lewis got out of bed she smelled the breakfast cooking downstairs and so she had to come out of her rented room – and before she did that, she had to get dressed, or she'd be misunderstood...

...or, just maybe, step into a 'doggie surprise' with her bare foot. Certainly, her new place of employment and residence wasn't that kind of a house, but Jenny still had to get dressed and not walk around in her nightie – she didn't owe the place after all, and besides, she was cold.

As Jenny hurriedly dressed, she heard faint barking outside and grinned slightly – it wasn't that she was a dog (or a cat, for that matter) person, but after several months, or even years, of hearing not ordinary animals, but all sort of prehistoric monsters, from sabre-tooth cats to some of the smaller species of dinosaurs, the sound of normal dog barks always brought a small smile to her face.

Suddenly, the smell of readied breakfast reached Jenny's nose again, reminding her that her latest occupation did have a daily schedule, and that if she tarried for too long, she wouldn't have much time to eat breakfast at all. Finishing with her morning toiletries, Jenny Lewis hurried downstairs, almost humming a song – for the first (or maybe second) time in her life, Jenny Lewis felt almost content.

* * *

The dinosaur was awe-inspiring, there was no doubt. Easily nine meters in length, it was the size of a bus and was probably just as heavy. Becker and Sarah were no dinosaur experts at all, but the massive quadruped, covered in double row of vaguely rhombus-shaped plates of armour, as well as much more impressive and rounded tail spikes, screamed canonical stegosaurus straight into their faces.

"Okay," Becker turned to Sarah, "what are our options?"

"Find out where's the time anomaly and somehow lead the stegosaurus back there," Sarah shrugged. "That's my best idea."

"Um, just for the process, how are you sure that it's a stegosaurus?" Becker decided on being obtuse for change.

Sarah glared. "The four pillar-like legs, the tiny head, the back plates, the tail spikes – even I know enough about the dinosaurs to know that this isn't a T-Rex!"

"Right, right," Becker hurriedly back-pedalled, "so how are we to bring him back there?"

"Where?"

"There, see?" Becker pointed towards the further end of the airfield, where the time anomaly shimmered in the air. "That's where it came from, most likely."

"Great! And how are we to lead it there?"

"Oh, that's easy – we shoot at it until it goes back home."

"We what?" Sarah stared at Becker as if he offered to kick a puppy into submission.

"Shoot at it," Becker said firmly. "Sarah, come on, look at it – the Big Spike is so big that some of the lesser calibre bullets will hardly even hurt it!"

"I don't know, it still feels wrong, shooting at animals that have done nothing wrong...well, yet," Sarah muttered, but Becker ignored her, turning to the rest of his men. A brief discussion and a series of order, and about half a dozen of ARC's special service soldiers began to fire.

That certainly provoked a reaction from the huge dinosaur. It abruptly shifted its weight backwards, lifted its' forelegs somewhat off the ground and slammed back down, creating a very definite resonance from this action – and then, as Becker and others (including Sarah) just stared, frozen by this unexpected response from the dumb reptile – the stegosaurus charged, straight at their Jeeps.

* * *

"Hey, let me guess – I've overslept, again," Jenny said cheerfully, as she entered the kitchenette.

"Yeah, you probably did," Jackie, Jenny's senior co-worker nodded calmly, as she pushed a stack of fried zucchini pancakes towards the shorter woman. "Still, I have a feeling that today is going to be different than the usual, so – you want sour cream with that?"

"Gee, you're awfully kind today – where's the boss?" Jenny said wryly, as she poured a generous amount of sour cream onto her fried vegetables – a rather unorthodox breakfast, but Jenny by now has firmly decided that she did like this sort of breakfast indeed.

"Out walking Michael, of course," Jackie shrugged, as she bit into some fried zucchini of her own. "Haven't you learned it by now?"

Jenny blushed. She had realized early enough in her arrival at this place that here things ran a bit differently than at the ARC or anywhere else where she had worked, but every once in a while she made a slip of the tongue. Of course, Jackie usually didn't make a big deal out of it, but Jenny still usually ended up feeling embarrassed over it.

It was at this moment that the owner of this dog-training complex walked in, with Michael, her prize Brazilian Mastiff, following suit. "Morning Jackie," she paused and looked at Jenny, "you slept late and didn't hear the morning news, right?"  
Jenny frowned. "What did I miss? Is it something important?"

"That depends – does a dinosaur demolishing London's primary airport is important?"

"What?" Jenny jumped up, instinctively reaching for her currently absent cell phone – but an acceptable substitute was provided by Jackie all the same. "Thanks."

Several moments later the telephone on James Lester's desk began to ring.

* * *

"What is it?" the aforementioned leader of the ARC snapped into the phone receiver. "Becker, is it you, you-"

"James, it's me."

"Jenny Lewis, I would say that I am glad to hear you, but truth to tell-"

"James, you've made this morning's news. How bad is it?"

"Last time I checked the television, it was chasing Becker, his girlfriend and his men all over the airfield, after demolishing both of their Jeeps. I'd say that it was pretty bad... but I don't know how it could be any worse."

"Where are Quinn, Connor, Abby?"

"Oh, they are absent in a different field-"

"James, come on."

"Fine, they're chasing Helen Cutter somewhere through time," Lester said crossly, "and haven't come back yet. Happy now?"

"Are you that daft to ask me this question?"

"Well-"

"Never mind, Lester," Jenny snapped the cell phone shut and turned to her new boss. "Uh-"

"Oh, very well, I'll give you a ride," the latter just rolled her eyes. "I don't know about you, but I have suspected all along that it would come to something like this."

"Thank you," Jenny said, truly grateful. "You want to be filled on the details on the way there?"

"We'll... see. Come on, Lewis – Jackie, the morning's shift on you."

"Aye-aye, boss!"

_To be continued..._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All character, unless stated otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures_

**Chapter 3**

The woman was sitting high in an araucaria tree, ignoring the heat of the Late Jurassic sun, star-ing at the spectacle that was unfolding in front of her. An allosaurus, the unofficial lion of that era, easily twelve meters long and possibly more than six meters tall, had cornered a ceratosaurus, a relatively smaller and more ancient carnivore in a highland pass. Swinging its massive claws and showing all of its sharp teeth, the allosaurus seemed to be assured of its' victory – and yet the ceratosaurus showed no intention of backing down: it opened its' own jaws and screeched back at the approaching enemy: although more high-pitched than the allosaurus' challenge, this cry promised the bigger theropod a battle to the death.

"This is going to be good," the woman muttered, as she pulled out a small digital video camera – one of several that she had pilfered from Oliver Leek – and prepared to record the face-off.

* * *

The stegosaurus appeared to be the next best thing to being invulnerable. Relatively slow and clumsy – it certainly wasn't capable of any highly sophisticated manoeuvres, the animal also seemed as unstopped as a freight train, or at least a bull elephant on a hormone surge. The dino-saur charged back and forth, swinging its spiked tail, and occasionally swept the aforementioned appendage in long arcs, trying either to impale or to swing aside its' attackers.

To make matters worse, Sarah realized Becker and others couldn't quite get the scale of the di-nosaur correctly: their regular ammo didn't appear to be slowing the stegosaurus down, while using something much more lethal – like the grenades would result in them having a colossal corpse on their hands, and what were they to do with that? Not even airport-issue forklifts would be able to move a multi-ton dinosaur, dead or alive, anywhere whole, and cutting the whole corpse into chunks was literally mind-boggling and unbelievable – i.e., they couldn't imagine pulling something like that off on the airfield, let alone finding the right tools for that job for a start.

It was at that moment that the second Jeep blew up, as the stegosaurus finally hit it for a second time with its massively spiked tail, flinging into the airfield gates, smashing the latter into bits and pieces (not too small, but still...) The resulting shock and 'illumination' and similar results had apparently frightened the dinosaur itself, and so it began to run away – well, more like trot really fast – from the site, towards one of the smaller airplanes out on the field.

"No, no, no, this is not good at all," Sarah muttered to Becker, who nodded, and began to load some heavier ammo into his submachine gun – things clearly were not going as planned.

* * *

Jenny Lewis was never prone to uttering profanities of any kind, mild or severe, but seeing the rather hashed-up job that Becker has done on the Heathrow caused her to realize that 'holy crap!' uttered by her current boss was probably the least severe utterance one could say on this occasion.

"This is bad," she muttered, as she realized that any animal that could do something like this could potentially do a lot worse both to other property and to people. "Something has to be done."

"Well, by 'something' one could mean get out of here as fast as we can, 'cause when the beast decides to get out of here, things would become a lot worse than even that," the other woman in the car spoke evenly, "but I suspect that that isn't what you would like to do?"

"No," Jenny admitted. "Sarah and even Becker were my friends...and if I were to abandon them, I would never be able to talk Lester again-"

"And so, to maintain your moral superiority, you'll fight-off a giant killer reptile," the other woman said flatly. "You're probably not quite sane, you know?"

"Well yes, um, but... you're not stopping the car."

"Well, I can't very well let you go to your doom, right? Hang on, and take the shotgun from be-neath my seat – I have a feeling that you're going to do some shooting out there."

"Me?"

"Hey, I am not letting you drive my car – take, the gun, aim, and fire!"

* * *

"All right, people, prepare to fire!" Becker snapped, as he loaded his own firearm and took aim. "Aim for the upper thighs and the base of the tail – not the knees. We do not need the animal crippled, just distracted away from the airplanes-"

It was at that moment a rather solidly built but otherwise nondescript gray van burst through the burning wreck of the gates and drove at the high speed past Becker, Sarah and others, closer to the dinosaur. "What the-?" was the only thing that Becker could say – and meanwhile one of the front windows of the van lowered, and a barrel of a shotgun emerged from the opening. Before anyone could say or do anything, the shotgun fired – and one of the plates on the dinosaur's plates cracked into several pieces.

Now that had clearly struck a nerve in more meanings than just metaphorically – a dinosaur bellowed louder than half a dozen French horns, and raced towards the van, the earth trembling underneath its tread – but the van itself was on the move, racing as fast towards the open time anomaly... still chased by the dinosaur. However, seeing how the dinosaur had been quite some distance away from the van, though it was running towards it, it wasn't running parallel or perpendicular to it, but rather at a rather sharp angle, with the time anomaly as the narrow point.

"Don't shoot!" Sarah hissed sharply for the sake of Becker and his men as they saw the surreal race to the finish. "You will just make it worse!"

"How can it be any worse?" Becker almost wailed, but lowered the barrel of his own firearm all the same. "Sarah – what can they be thinking?!"

"I'm not sure," Sarah admitted – sure, the van was fast, but the enraged stegosaurus proved to be capable of moving quite fast itself, and the surface of the airfield favoured it over the van's tires, which were more suited for ordinary roads, not this area, and consequently, the stegosaurus, was catching up to them even as they moved closer to the time anomaly. Soon, it was running almost behind the car, side-by-side rather than straight behind it, but still...

And then, abruptly, the van turned sharply to the left, almost before driving into the time anom-aly itself, but the dinosaur, not as manoeuvrable as the car, wasn't able to repeat the manoeuvre – and so had ran straight into the time anomaly, which closed with an almost audible thud!

Becker and others just stared at the result with open mouths – and then Jenny Lewis emerged from the van with the still-smoking shotgun and smiled weakly at them. "Wasn't that fun?" she said weakly before her legs gave out from underneath her and she abruptly sat down onto the airfield.

It was at this ominous silence that Sarah's cell phone began to ring – and according to Murphy's Law, it was Lester.

* * *

In the untamed wilderness, in the world of the dinosaurs, a situation could change in a blink of an eye, the woman mused. Take this event as an example – one moment, the two theropods were staring at each other in an unavoidable face-off, the next moment a clearly wounded stegosaurus had thundered down the pass via a time anomaly, apparently oblivious to everything in its' path. The quicker and more manoeuvrable ceratosaurus had jumped aside and escaped, but the allosau-rus, (who had been also knocked slightly off balance by the escaping ceratosaurus) wasn't able to react in time, and so the more massive herbivore had slammed into it, trampling it into ground, and breaking its own front legs in the process, as it had 'stumbled' over the unexpected obstacle. Now, the 'lion of the Jurassic' and the spiky-tailed herbivore were just a bloody mess, and the survived ceratosaurus, as it bit sharply with all of its' strength into the neck of the still breathing stegosaurus, was fully aware of it, and intended to capitalize on this as much as he could, before other carnivores arrived and stole this discovery from him.

The woman just grimaced and put away her camera – the truly exciting part was over, and she had seen this gory event time and again throughout her travels through the prehistory in all sorts of 'incarnations', to put it bluntly.

"Well, that's over," she muttered to herself, as she began to climb down the araucaria trunk, "now onto the more important event – namely my wake!"

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine unless noted otherwise, but belong to the Impossible Pictures.  
Note: This chapter contains spoilers to the official series._

**Chapter 4**

As it could be expected from Africa, the sun shone brightly, and the weather was hot, yet Danny Quinn, now apparently trapped a bit over three million years in the past, noticed none of these climate features: instead he was busy thinking of a way to get back to England, home – but un-fortunately, none were forthcoming.

For a long while Danny just sat there on the rocks, staring at the clouds floating above him, be-tween the crags of the mountain ridge at the foot of which he was currently sitting, and that re-minded him of someone – Helen, or, to be more precise, her corpse, which still possessed all of the items she had in life, most likely, and that meant that there also was the time anomaly mani-festation device, with which Helen was able to travel through time so handily, and therefore this meant that he, Danny, had a way out of here back – back to the Mesozoic time period, where he had left Abby and Connor.

Feeling better already and whistling a jaunty tune, Danny Quinn ventured back to the outcrop from which he had come.

* * *

"Connor, come on!"

"Ow! I'm sorry, Abby, really!"

The somewhat physically mismatched duo, Abby Maitland and Connor Temple, were making their way through the Cretaceous woods – but they were not making very good time due to the fact that Connor still felt physically poorly...and they didn't have any good ideas about where to go to either: all they had for a lead was a general memory of the general direction in which Danny Quinn had gone at when he went on to pursue Helen, and that wasn't a very good direc-tion indicator at all.

Regrettably, Abby, for all of her better qualities, had never mastered the art of thinking objec-tively, and so she was now thinking subjectively, directing all of her frustration at Connor (she was never too good at dealing with frustration either), who, truth to be told, was the slower one of the two, limping slightly and still staring around in object awe at actually being around his two favourite hobbies: Abby Maitland and dinosaurs.

Sadly, at least one of these hobbies, Abby Maitland, was not quite reciprocating back at the happy Connor: she was glaring at him and stamping her foot in impatience.

"Connor," she began, but this time the young man interrupted her:

"Abby, look – it's that device of Helen's!"

Naturally, there was a pause in Abby's actions as she bent down alongside Connor to take a look – sure enough, there was the smallish, bluish, rectangular hand-held device previously used by Helen to manifest time anomalies when she wanted to, apparently. "All right!" she exchanged similarly delighted grin with Connor. "We're saved!"

* * *

Danny stared at the sight lying before his eyes in frank disbelief: "I'm doomed," he spoke aloud, ignoring the fact that it sounded properly ridiculous. "I am simply doomed."

In reality, Danny's behaviour did have a very justifiable cause: Helen's corpse, on the looting of which he had such high hopes, was gone, gone completely...and so was the raptor's corpse: it was as if they never been here, but this was ridiculous, for someone or something has obviously dragged them away – but where were the drag marks?

Before joining the ARC, Danny had worked as a constable-detective in the Scotland Yard, so it was safe to say that he knew something or other about following marks and footsteps, but had trained to follow them in London streets, not African savannah, and so he wasn't never near his best in this situation, or the most alert, as a sudden growl from behind caught him completely flat-footed.

Danny whirled around, expecting something anything from the sabre-tooth cat that Connor and Abby had once described to him in great detail to even another raptor, but what he didn't expect was a leopard, or one of its' cousins at any rate: this feline did have canine fangs protruding out of its' mouth, albeit just to the chin, and... it was looking at Danny with a very hungry look at its eyes – and then it pounced.

Instinctively, Danny did probably the best thing he could: he whirled around letting the prehis-toric cat slam into his backpack instead of his chest, but the tactic worked only partway: though it didn't quite reach Danny's waist height-wise, the animal was still heavy, and as it latched onto the backpack with its forelegs, it pulled it, and consequently Danny, backwards as well – and this brought its hind limbs into action.

As Danny fell backwards, pulled in that direction by the animal's weight, he felt that cat's hind pair of claws start to rake his own legs, threatening to hamstring him altogether. With every ounce of strength that he possessed, fuelled by pain, he managed to wiggle out of the backpack's straps, and hurriedly climb onto the bluff from which Helen had fallen just a short while ago. Behind him, Danny could hear the prehistoric cat snarl and finish-off his backpack – and unless he reached the top of the bluff in time, he would be out of tricks and his luck.

* * *

"All right, Connor!" Abby said excitedly, "do the magic and figure out a way to achieve the im-possible! Bring us onto Danny!"

"Yes, Abby!" Connor grinned back and pressed the switch – and the world erupted in a chro-matically white flash of a time anomaly as it enveloped them...and then deposited somewhere else.

"Connor? Where or when are we?" Abby said, her jubilation once again replaced by concern and confusion.

"Well, judging by the cycads and the wallencia, I'd say that we're still in the Cretaceous...and our time machine seemed to have died," Connor said slowly, in a mortified tone of voice.

"Say what?!" Abby stared at the time anomaly gadget still grasped by Connor – the small rectan-gular device was no longer semi-transparent and blue in colour, but has faded into an opaque pale greyish-whiteness instead. "It, it cannot be dead! It was our last hope!"

A loud, roaring cry echoed through the trees somewhere further on in the bizarre forest – a cry of an animal that Abby had never heard before, maybe even the one made by the huge armoured dinosaur that came crashing through the trees, ignoring the two humans who were tiny compared to its' bulk.

"Abby," Connor spoke in full seriousness, "this is an ankylosaurus, essentially the armoured di-nosaur, and it lived just few million years before the comment. Abby – we're in so much trouble that you cannot imagine!"

Abby gulped.

_To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, unless noted otherwise, but of Impossible Pictures.  
Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the original series_

**Chapter 5**

_About six months ago..._

Jenny Lewis was a woman most miserable, and looking at her reflection in the mirror, she re-flected that she currently looked like a victim of a shipwreck – a gross exaggeration to be sure, but still holding a kernel of realism.

Just a few weeks before today, Jenny Lewis genuinely thought that she could be happy at the ARC, with Nick at her side (or vice versa), with genuine friends and co-workers next to her... just a few weeks ago that dream has died alongside Nick, and as for the rest of them... Connor, and Abby, and Sarah, and even Becker were good people, but as the events with the giant man-eating dinosaur and equally man-eating fungus have shown, it was rather the question as to whether she could lead them – and she suspected that she couldn't. Twice she had tried to lead them through a time-anomaly-related emergency and both times it didn't end disaster only be-cause Danny Quinn had decided to involve himself in the ARC's affairs. Where Jenny had tried to plan and keep things under control, he just went with the flow, almost as unpredictable as the 'temporally-displaced' creatures themselves, and he was successful. It was clear to Jenny, that the ARC's field team would be better off with Danny rather than her in charge...but where did that leave her? Jenny didn't know, and frankly she didn't care – judging by the lack of phone calls from the others, they were just as content to go on without her...

And yet, where did it leave her? Even after leaving the ARC, she could easily find a job as an-other PR consultant in London or beyond the city's limits, and yet... the thrills of being a PR consultant had faded somewhat during her employment at the ARC, so Jenny was truly reluctant to send her resume to new potential employers – and that seemingly left her with just one other viable option, to go back home, to Oxfordshire.

Since curses, like chickens, tend to arrive home to roost, the mere thought of going back home and facing her parents with her tail tucked between her legs metaphorically speaking caused Jenny to bristle and at least to partially get out that wallow of self-pity into which she had been sinking since she left the ARC. There was no way in the past, or present, or future, that she was going back home to her family at all – she would rather stay in a hotel until she got over it...but the part of Jenny that had got activated by her remembrances of her childhood, reminded her that staying in a hotel would be the best way to remain in the clutches of self-pity, and that was something that she didn't want, not really.

But then, what else was there left? Jenny began to leaf through her files with a new intent and determination – there had to be some other option left to her via which to get out of her fink and possibly experience some shock therapy via which to get over Nick – or something to that extent...

Suddenly, Jenny stiffened, and then a small sad smile appeared on her face – she just may have found what she was looking for...

"Bingo."

* * *

The weather on the day was typically 'British' – heavily overcast and waterlogged, causing Jenny to shiver even inside her car: maybe going out today was not such a good idea after all... but it was her only one, and frankly, lately it seemed that her most thought through and out ideas were the worst, maybe it was better instead to go with the flow and see where it will take her instead.

Steeling her self and her backbone, Jenny walked over to the rather uninviting gates of the com-plex and pressed the button of the electric buzzer. Several moments later the gates opened, and an unknown blonde appeared in the opening.

"I'm sorry miss, but we don't remember any appointments scheduled for today," the blonde said with an apologetic smile, that didn't look too apologetic, actually.

Jenny narrowed her eyes – the other woman was taller than her even without high heels, but her body was curvy just in the right places to be not skinny, but slim and graceful; unfortunately, the blonde's face with its rather serpentine expression rather ruined her overall allure... but that wasn't Jenny's issue right now.

"Oh, uh, I don't have an appointment," she said apologetically, "I kind of thought that I drop in to see Ms. Steele."

"The boss lady doesn't really do drop-ins," the other woman replied, also somewhat apologeti-cally. "Maybe you can try and set up an appointment at a later date?"

"Look, I'm sorry, but can you try?" Jenny dug-in her heels instead. "Just tell her that I'm one of Lester's people."

"The boss lady has mentioned James Lester few times," the other woman frowned, "and honestly, it wasn't in a complimentary way. Are you sure that that's a good idea?"

"No," Jenny admitted, "but just try anyways."

It was at that moment that a new character joined the dialogue. "Who is it?" another female voice cried out from deeper inside the enclosure. "A client?"

"I don't know – it's one of Lester's people, but not a man or a short blonde: she wants to come in, should I let her?"

"Since she's one of Lester's people – yes."

And that was how Jenny re-met Caroline Steele.

* * *

It was less than half an hour later, and the two women – Caroline's assistant was off someplace else – were sitting in Caroline's kitchenette, sipping some bland hot tea.

"You want to do what?" Caroline repeated her question, acting as if she couldn't believe what she had heard – and she probably didn't, Jenny's offer was quite incredulous.

"I was wondering, if I could rent a room," Jenny said, sounding a bit more apologetic than she would've liked. "I am having a sort of a crisis, I need a clean break, at least for a while."

"And you thought of my place? Why?"

"Because it's the only place that fit my criteria," Jenny said simply, but seeing the frown deepen-ing on Caroline's face, tried to elaborate. "Look. I, uh, don't have a lot of options beyond going back to where I came, either home or PR consultation, and seeking another job at the govern-ment. Neither sound exactly like the clean break that I need."

"Have you thought about taking a vacation instead?"

"How can one have a vacation when one isn't working?"

"Ah, you've left the ARC?"

"Essentially, I have taken a prolonged leave of absence, but overall – yeah, I quit."

"May I ask why?"

"At heart, it was all about Nick, I suppose."

"What about Nick?"

Jenny blinked, feeling as if she'd been sucker-punched in her blind spot. "He died," she said more viciously than she thought that she would.

"Ah, I remember that..." Caroline trailed away, as her realization of Jenny's facial expression finally sunk in. "...or I do not, right?"

"More like wrong," Jenny said with a grimace. "You've been at Stephen's funeral... he was an-other friend of ours..." the brief flash of anger leaked out of her as if from out of a sieve. "And Nick has never been quite the same until he died."

"And now he's dead as well.

"Yes, Helen killed him."

"And now you're here."

"Yes," Jenny nodded. "I know that this is stupid-"

"Stupid? Try 'foolish' instead. I raise and breed dogs here, I do not run a resort or a therapeutic clinic!"

"I know, I've read your files," Jenny snapped back. "I still got enough money to pay you rent."

"Money's not the point here!" Caroline wasn't backing down. "Where do you expect me to put you? In the attic?! It's not like I have a guest room...and furthermore, have you seen the daily working schedule? It's pretty hectic, but it tends to start early and finish late – it's not like you'll find any rest here."

"I'll be the judge of that...and I am used to irregular hours after one time anomaly emergency after another! What did you think I did?"

"Made publically acceptable spins that kept the ARC's true goals concealed?"

"It's what I was hired for, yes," Jenny admitted, a bit embarrassed, "but in reality it very quickly transformed into a very hands-on approach instead. Look," her embarrassment deepened further, causing her to blush, "this isn't my best idea, or even most thought-through. But... lately life seems to tell me that it is such ideas that seem to work best, so I thought that I try it that way. Sorry, if I took your time, I-"

"Sit," Caroline said curtly, and Jenny, who was getting up, sat back down. "Let me see – you're having a life crisis and need help. By yourself, you decided that help can be found here."

"Um, sort of?" Jenny said, sounding unsure when confronted in this matter.

"Right. Well, the only way I can help you, I think, if I hire you, part-time, onto here. How about that?"

"You want to hire me? As a what?"

"An assistant, just like Jackie."

"Jackie?"

"You met her at the gates. The pay isn't that good, but it's not about the money, now is it?"

"No," Jenny said slowly, with less confidence than what she felt, "it's not. But why?"

"You told me that you need a clean break – so if you've come to me for it, I'll give you one. How's that for an answer?"  
Jenny paused for a long moment, thinking Caroline's offer over – their confrontation hasn't gone over the way she intended to, but maybe that was the way Danny's approach to life worked: it all worked out in the end, just not in the expected way. So, if it worked all the same in the end, why complain about the details?

"It's a deal," she said solemnly, and shook Caroline's offered hand.

* * *

"And that," Jenny finished telling her story to Becker and Sarah on their way back to the ARC, where James Lester was waiting for them, all but boiling over from anger, "is how I ended up working for Caroline after leaving the ARC. Any questions?"

"No," Sarah had the good graces to blush. "Uh, sorry about not calling you and all."

"That's... okay, it's not okay, but now I don't think is the time to talk about this or to have any other sort of confrontation, not when Lester has been phoning every 10 or so minutes expecting us to be at the ARC right away."

"We're here," Caroline interrupted the other women from her driver's seat.

"Yes," Becker echoed her grimly. "I hope that it's nothing more serious than a sudden trilobite infestation or something like that."

He was wrong – it was going to be much worse.

_To be continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, unless noted otherwise, but of Impossible Pictures.  
Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the original series_

**Chapter 6**

They eventually found Lester at the enclosure that hosted the ARC semi-official mascot – the Columbian mammoth that had been captured by Nick, Abby and Connor briefly before Leek's plans began to unfold... and unfortunately, Lester was not alone, but rather accompanied by three strangers, of whom at least one stared at the mammoth in question with clear awe and fascination.

"Sir?" Becker said politely. "We're here. You wanted to see us?"

"Yes, yes I did, but first let me introduce you to our visitors," Lester was polite, something that was doubly worrying, but there was nothing that Becker and the others could do about it. "The lady on the left is Ancona Muirkirk from OPP."

"OPP?" Becker echoed despite him.

"Ontario Provincial Police," Lester said with a slight grimace. "She's a colleague of Danny Quinn from overseas, and so's the gentleman on the right, sort of – he's colonel Winters of the RCMP."

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police," Becker knew that one. "And, uh-"

"Their companion," Lester raised his voice slightly, causing the older man to step away from the mammoth's enclosure, "is Professor Alexander Ellenton from ROM, aka Royal Ontario Museum, the palaeontology division."

"Hello there," professor Ellenton said cheerfully. "What an amazing mammoth you got there, eh?"

There was a brief pause as the members of the ARC's reserve team and their visitors observed each other. Both Muirkirk and Winters had a tanned, somewhat craggy and windswept, weath-ered look of people who spent plenty of time outside, although in the Mountie's case the look was augmented by circles underneath his eyes, indicating that he wasn't apparently, getting enough sleep lately. Professor Ellenton, on the other hand, looked more Headmaster Dumbledore of Rowling's series, save that his beard was shorter but wider, and his hair was darker - greyish as opposed to white. In short, a rather mismatched trio, but at the ARC, many staff members were mismatched themselves, especially when it came to the field teams...

"Yes, yes we do," Jenny said calmly, slipping easily into her old role of the ARC's PR specialist, "but this isn't about it, now is it? May we know why we were called back here so fast?"

"You, you should," colonel Winters echoed, his blue eyes dark and the mouth under his bushy moustache grim. "Professor, let's begin."

"But before we do," Ancona Muirkirk spoke up suddenly, clearly nervous, "can I see Danny Quinn, please?"

* * *

There was a lull in the beginning conversation, and Becker and Sarah turned red (well, Becker did; in Sarah's case it was more of a darker brownish colour instead). "He, um, isn't at the ARC right now, but in another field," Becker finally managed.

"Oh, but when we last talked to each other, he promised to be here when we arrived," Ancona insisted.

"As the chief of the ARC I can officially state that whatever promises Mr. Quinn had given you, was exclusively private and unofficial and thus didn't have as high a priority as you thought that it would," Lester said flatly, "and furthermore, here at the ARC the working hours tend to be irregular and job-related emergencies – unexpected. We regret, but you'll have to start without Mr. Quinn's presence here."

"Very well," professor Ellenton nodded, and began to walk away from the mammoth's enclo-sure, forcing others to follow him. "Now then, I believe that the good colonel can explain that part better than I."

Winters nodded and began to speak in his turn. "About a month, or maybe a bit more, we began to have some problems in the settlements along the Mackenzie Mountains," he paused. "For the record, it's a mountain range marking the border of the Canadian territories of Yukon and the Northwest; consequently, it's a really, really underpopulated area – mostly miners, trappers, some Aboriginal villages, and only two real roads leading there... Naturally, when we, or more precisely, my office began to receive reports claiming that some sort of creature was harassing various animals both wild and domestic in that area, intermixed with rumours about werewolves, or even the Wendigo, the reaction there was mild, to say the least."

"I'm sorry, but what's the Wendigo?" Jenny said, slowly. "I mean, I remember reading some-where that it was sort of like a werewolf to begin with."

"Not really and not always, no," Winters said rather coolly, "and the professor will get to it later, all right?"

"Sorry."

"Now, seeing as the call was considered a relatively low priority – I still decided to send two of my best agents, Clark Hill and Grant Brook, to settle the matter as quickly and neatly as possible. Honestly, we all expected this matter to be settled within a month, or maybe a month and a half – animal theft and harassment were not considered to be serious or complicated problems by our standards."

"Um, what do you mean, harassed animals? Just for the record," Sarah said quickly.

"I mean they were getting nervous, twitchy, the wild animals were moving out of the forested areas out of season," colonel Winters replied more patiently than he had to Jenny's question, "plus the herds and the like were growing fewer in number as well – something was killing and eating them, in short."

"Maybe a new pack of wolves? Or feral dogs?" Sarah wasn't backing down, but the Mountie colonel didn't actually seem to be angry.

"Actually yes, that was one of our initial theories," he nodded in agreement. "We don't get too many packs of these animals back in the north, but they can come up from the south, the Prairie Provinces. Still, our preferred assumption was that of poachers with several trained animals who were doing the actual harassing."

"Excuse me," it was Caroline's turn to interrupt the Mountie, "but have your men found any clues that could indicate the size, if not the breed of these animals, or are they just mongrels?"

Unexpectedly, this innocent question caused Winters' face to be darkened from anger. "Oh, clues were found, all right," he said darkly, "but not the kind that we expected to be found. Professor?" he nodded to the older man and fell completely silent.

"You must understand," the latter said after a brief pause when it became clear that Winters would not speak again, "that the aforementioned Mountie agents, Hill and Brook, have died within 36 hours of arriving there and starting their investigation, and in rather gruesome ways – and this is actually why we're here, because, in particular, officer Muirkirk felt that Mr. Danny Quinn could help us solve this puzzle, so to speak."

"Are you aware of what we're doing here?" Jenny shook her head. "And by that, I mean that we're dealing with animals, rather than people – I'm honestly not sure that we will be able to help you at all."

"Yes, your boss has explained it to us already," the professor said mildly, "but first I want you to see the evidence" – and he opened the door to one of the ARC's labs.

* * *

Inside the lab there were several people, most of whom were dressed in uniforms similar to that of Muirkirk and Winters, indicating that they were members of the RCMP and OPP, but it wasn't the people who caught the attention of the ARC's members – it was a massive device apparently carved out of bone. A piece of paper labelled "Exhibit A" was positioned before it.

"Can I take a closer look at it, sir?" Becker asked, looking in the general direction of Lester and professor Ellenton.

"Of course, just don't touch it yourself," colonel Winters replied instead. Becker needed no fur-ther permission and quickly walked over to it, gazing at the contraption with a critical eye. The device was straight, thicker at one end that had a hole drilled right through it, and thinner at the other, where the bone was carved into two blades, which came closer together at their ends – they were carved into vaguely hook-like shapes complete with spiky protuberances at their tops, yet overall their shapes were flattened, though all of their protruding edges – top, bottom, front – were sharpened to a nearly razor-like sharpness; still, the shear mass of the weapon meant that the blades smashed as much as they cut their victim.

"You know what I don't see?" Caroline spoke up suddenly, as she had come up behind Becker to also look at the massive weapon of murder, "places were the bones were attached to each other."

"That because there aren't any, my good woman," professor Ellenton spoke from the other end of the bone weapon, "this whole thing has been carved from a single piece of bone."

"Say what? What is this, a mammoth's backbone?" Becker exclaimed instead.

"Completely not so," the professor shook his head. "On the contrary, this was carved from a leg bone of an indricothere, the biggest land mammal ever, a giant hornless relative of the rhinoceros extinct for over twenty-five million years."

"This bone doesn't look like it's that old," Becker shook his head.

"And it's not," Winters said sharply. "We checked it, the OPP checked, ROM checked it – it's less than a year old since it was acquired and carved into its' present form. Your people are also checking it, of course."

"Yes, they do," Lester agreed flatly, exchanging looks with his agents, "but we still would like to know how it ties into the whole harassed animal investigation."

"This bone was a part of a spring-loaded trap used to kill Grant Brook," Winters replied, slowly. "It had slammed into his lower torso, effectively smashing it apart, while impaling his upper torso on the spike-like protuberances on the frontal top edges, ripping it away – his death was brief but truly, painfully horrific."

"And what about his partner – I think there were two of them?" Jenny asked, a bit sharper than she intended to.

"Clark Hill had his throat ripped out with teeth, right before he and the neighbouring countryside were soaked in ethanol alcohol and set on fire. We weren't able to bring his corpse here, but we got both photographs and written reports on the other table for you to read over."

There was a brief exchange of looks among the ARC field agents, and finally Caroline walked over, seeing that she was the most senior expert on animal attacks in absence of Abby and Con-nor. She began to look over the evidence and almost immediately began to frown – and the frown deepened. After several more minutes of reading she put her reading material aside and turned to Winters and Muirkirk.

"Are they all written in the same vein?" she asked flatly.

"Yes, why?"

"All right, listen. I am no zoologist, I just train dogs, but I do know dogs, and I feel that I can tell you that you can cross them out of the list of animal suspects."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Michael!"

In trotted Michael, Caroline's prize Brazilian Mastiff and her very own personal dog. Since it could, among other ways, smash Rex the coelurosauravus of Abby and Connor like a gnat, Jenny suspected that that was one of the reasons why the flying reptile tended to stay away from Caro-line – it could smell the dog's smell and grew scared.

"Michael – smile!"

The mastiff opened its' mouth wide, revealing several rows of very impressive teeth. "Now then," Caroline developed a lecturing tone for some reason, "this is a big dog, big enough to overpower even a professional man, with the right training. However, if the good officers would take a look and have some measurements taken, it would be easily seen that Michael, as per ex-ample, would not so much bite the throat out, as bite cleanly through the neck, as would the jaws of other dog breeds of the matching size," she paused. "To dwell some more on the topic of dog sizes, we can also put away the toy breeds and lap dog breeds for obvious reason, correct, and as for the more middle-sized breeds, like the Doberman-pinscher and the Airedale terrier, I see that you have discarded them yourself, based on some tracks that you were able to find on the inves-tigation following the forest fire, is it not so?" She paused, took another breath, and finished. "And one more thing. If we're going to go to Canada, which I guess can go either way, then I would like to see the original bite marks – somehow they don't seem to be quite canine even if we discard the big dog breeds: maybe they were made by a wolf or a coyote, but I am not so sure about that either."

"They're not," Jenny spoke up as she looked away from the written report she had taken for a look, and she sounded not too happy herself. "I have seen similar marks on human victims in the past – they were made by a sabre-tooth cat – and these ones are kind of similar to those ones."

"You have encountered a sabre-tooth cat?" professor Ellenton spoke-up excitedly.

"Yes, but it's a story for another time, wouldn't you think, and besides, the cat's dead now," Jenny replied and turned to look at her boss. "Anyways, what does this all lead to?"

"A weapon made from a fresh bone of a long-extinct animal, tracks and teeth marks of another long-extinct animal, and at least two human deaths – this sounds like something the ARC must investigate," Lester said blandly.

"But can we? This is another country we're talking about, even if it's a part of the same Com-monwealth," Sarah suddenly spoke up.

"Yes, you can – in fact it was highly requested and suggested," Winters spoke before Muirkirk could, as enigmatic glances passed between the two Canadian police officers. "The only thing in question was to see how competent you were at least in lab conditions, and you have passed – congratulations, you're coming to the north."

"It's all in the interest of mutual co-operation and Commonwealth's well-being," added Lester. "I am sure that Ms. Lewis will explain it to you as you get packing."

"Of course, Mr. Lester," Caroline smiled with a grin that had too much tooth and nowhere near enough good cheer – quite a few people felt relief that that smile wasn't directed at them, "but can we have a brief talk with you, please?"

And James Lester wisely – or unwisely – agreed.

_To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters, unless noted otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter seven**

Time has frozen.

Or maybe not. No matter what has happened, the fact was that everything around Danny Quinn had grown murky and indistinct, even the face of the stony bluff that he was desperately climbing to escape from the prehistoric monster – everything has grown static and indistinct, except for one... person.

"Hello, Danny," Helen Cutter said, smiling sweetly, as she sat on top of the bluff from which she has fallen to her death only a short while later. "Welcome to the afterlife, I suppose."

* * *

"Before all or any of you can start with your trademark insubordination, I first want to congratu-late you on your self-control and the professional performance in front of our visitors from abroad. And secondly, I want to point out that this is out of my hands – the orders for our co-operation, should such be required, has come not quite from the prime minister himself, but close enough."

"Fine, James Lester," Caroline seemed to have deflated and cooled-down somewhat, "but I still request for two or three of your men to help Jackie run my business until this whole thing is done over with. And secondly, what about the financial matters? Do we get a commission, or a fixed amount, or what?"

"And thirdly," Becker joined in, "who'll be in charge of that whole operation? The RCMP, the Canadian scientists, who?"

"And fourthly, what's England's stake in this whole undertaking for real?" Jenny spoke from the left flank. "I mean, do we just passively assist and hover in the background, or what?"

There was a pause in the conversation, as everyone just looked at Sarah, who blushed and gener-ally indicated via body language that she didn't have anything to talk about, regarding the up-coming operation overseas.

Upon seeing this, Lester exhaled hard. "Yes, I will send several people to help your assistant with the dogs, and while the amount for your expenses in Canada hasn't been quite set yet, it will probably be enough – I mean, it's Canada, on what you will spend it? Moose-rack-antlers or something?" He shifted to Becker and Jenny. "This is the RCMP operation, and thus it's Winters – or his superiors, though I somehow doubt that, it sounded to me more like Winters was in charge at least in the field – so he has the final say, and we, or rather you, are to generally as-sist...as instructed or required. Any more questions?"

None were forthcoming.

"No? That's good, your plane leaves in less than 12 hours, so start packing!"

Becker seemed to have changed his mind and wanted to ask something, but at that moment Sarah elbowed him hard in the side, so he said nothing, and just left with the others instead.

* * *

"Helen," Danny exhaled hard, "you're alive."

"Oh, am I?" Helen lay face first over the bluff and looked Danny straight in the eye. "But how can it be? You saw me die here... and now I am seeing you do the same thing – unless I'm just a figment of your delirious imagination, brought forth to torment you in the last minutes of life while the dinofelis gnaws your flesh of your bones, see?" She stretched forth one of her arms, which held a rather well-nibbled humanoid skull as well. "This is your skull, once the dinofelis gets its way with you. How's that for dramatic irony? You battled to save your ancestors, and now one of their natural foes gets you instead!"

Danny paused and looked at the skull. The skull stared blindly back at him, its' sockets empty though dark with whatever substance that he didn't care about. Then he looked beyond it at Helen, who was still lying on her stomach looking down at him from the bluff's top. "Helen," he said firmly, "you're alive, aren't you?"

"Am I?" Helen asked, almost coyly for a nearly certified madwoman. "But how can it be? Am I not dead, after all? Have you not seen me die, Danny Quinn?"

Danny slowly looked at Helen's face, and then eyed her skull-holding hand – he was measuring the way of grabbing the latter, but here, without full knowledge what was going on here – and he did seen her die after all, so anything could be real here, in this time and place, and then shifted back to Helen's own face. "Helen," he said slowly, "this isn't time for your mind games. Either help me or leave me die in peace – please."

There was an almost tangible lull in his surroundings, and Helen slowly withdrew her hand with the skull, propping right next to her neck, so that both it and she could stare down at Danny. "Tell me, Danny Quinn," and there was rather less playfulness in her voice, "how did I die?"

* * *

"Why did you do that for?" Becker snapped. "I was just about to tell Lester that we might be leaving a lot later than in less than twelve hours due to the dinosaur's rampage."

"Rampage is rather a key word here," Sarah snapped back. "Have you forgotten that it's kind of our fault? Lester seems to be rather mellow than when we left, so do you want him hyped up again? And, were he to learn that because of us the dinosaur had tore part of Heathrow apart, he might just be angry enough to send us over to Canada by ship instead, and I get seasick easily, and would rather not!"

"And neither would we," Caroline agreed, as she and Jenny had looked at the arguing pair. "Fur-thermore, we still need to buy the necessary utilities... well, whatever's necessary to rough it in the Canadian wilderness or whatever."

Sarah paled. "You sure?" she asked, rather upset. "I mean maybe we'll just stay in the museum or wherever, and aid with the scientific work or whatever..." under the gazes of others, she just stopped and sighed. "That's not going to happen, is it?"

"Probably not, and we don't know much about scientific work to begin with," Jenny almost grinned. "Although, as long as we're on that topic, what's a Wendigo and how different it is from a werewolf or whatever?"

"Well, um, the Wendigo is essentially a man-eating spirit that possesses people or is a man-eating monster," Sarah said carefully. "It's only real tie with the werewolf, just between us, is that just like lycanthropy is something of a real-life disease, there's also a wendigo psychosis, which, essentially, is what it sounds like – a person begins to think that he's a Wendigo and turns cannibal."

"Well, one of the Mounties did have his throat bitten out," Becker said with a grimace. "I mean, it may sound wrong, because it would certainly be so much easier for us, but I actually hope that this psychosis isn't at the root of it..." he trailed away, looking sheepish. "Can I re-phrase this better?"

"Well, uh, the Wendigo myths originated in eastern Canada, and we're going to the northwest, I think," Sarah said, trying to sound braver than she felt. "Maybe, uh, this isn't a victim of a psy-chosis or something after all."

"The Neanderthals," Caroline said suddenly.

"What?" the others turned to her.

"Maybe one of them has that psychosis and got kicked through the time anomaly to our time and that Canadian place?" Caroline said.

"Now that's just a silly stretch of imagination, and besides, you heard professor Ellenton speak – this is an indricothere bone, they existed and died out long before the Neanderthals had," Sarah spoke up with more firmness than she had felt.

"Well, about that," Becker said, still looking a bit sheepish, "how do we know that that's a-whatever bone, and not, say, a mammoth bone? Personally, I wouldn't know one from another unless it was a tusk that we're talking about, and so'd the rest of you, I wager, and so's Lester – that's why we have so much time on our hands: it's for him to have the, um, our scientists to double-check that Alexander Ellenton's statements."

"Oh," Sarah blinked. "I- I guess I didn't think of that."

"Yeah, and while I am on a roll, I just want to add that the equipment for Canadian wilderness – we got it all, from boots to anti-bug spray."

"Why don't we take a look, then?" Jenny said, slowly. "And even if we don't like it...we'll keep it for a plan B, right, girls?"

Becker could only look hurt, but Sarah and Caroline nodded in agreement.

* * *

"How did you what?" Danny said incredulously. "What are you – mad?"

"No, I'm dead, and so are you," Helen said calmly, "so let's get down to business, Danny Quinn – how did I die?"

"Why do you want to know this?" Danny snapped, no longer sure of what the woman was going to do.

"What else is there left for me?" Helen responded to a question with a question. "Come on, Danny Quinn, please – it's such a small thing for you to tell, isn't it?" the last words were said with a genuinely pitiful undertone.

Danny frowned from aggravation – if he had his way, he would've grasped Helen by the collar and force out of Helen how was she able to freeze time...if that's what she did, for if he really was dying and Helen was really dead, then this conversation was even more bizarre and surreal. But, in any case...

"Look, you killed the local ape-men or whatever they are," he said slowly, measuring the distance between his hands and hers, "and were gloating to me from up there, when a raptor, which had followed me from the previous time travel, has attacked you, and together you fell off the bluff and died. I didn't have anything to do with it, honest."

"You know, something, Danny?" Helen said, as she put her grisly trophy of a skull aside, away from her, "I believe you." She leaned forwards. "Now grab my hand!"

Danny lunged upwards, reaching out... but he was able to grab only one of Helen's arms...with the other, she grasped Danny by the side of the head and pulled him sharply upwards, so a sharp spike of pain burst from behind Danny's eyes, and then...

...then he found himself on top of the bluff, without his backpack, with the prehistoric feline growling distantly from the bottom of bluff – and no sign of Helen, not even a foot-track.

"Helen!" He yelled out. "Enough with playing games – where are you?!"

There was no reply, but something nudged Danny across his ankle – he looked down and gaped: staring back at him was the skull that Helen Cutter used to mock him with just moments across.

_To be continued..._


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters, unless noted otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures.  
Note: Contains spoilers for the canon series._

**Chapter eight**

James Lester was not a man often plagued by indecision, but now was one of those rare occa-sions for sure: what was he to do?

First of all, there was the matter of the dinosaur rampage back at the Heathrow. James Lester wasn't the keenest of the dinosaur experts, but even he could recognize a textbook example of a stegosaurus when he saw one, and had belatedly realized that it looked and behaved much differently than it did in TV shoes or even in books – essentially, it behaved like a large, dangerous animal as opposed to the harmless, stupid textbook critter – something to keep in mind, in short.  
However, the dinosaur's character aside, there was the matter of the rather less-than-competent handling of it by Becker and Sarah Page – Lester strongly suspected that neither the late Nick Cutter, nor the hopefully not late Danny Quinn would not have been impressed by the group's daring at all...although the last part, when the dinosaur had almost chased the van into the time anomaly was actually more impressive, but...

...but this was Jenny Lewis doing part of that very impressive stunt, Jenny Lewis, who used to be not that kind of a person at all, who know clearly was someone else – what has happened to her? "It's my fault, sort of," Lester musingly admitted to himself, after first ensuring that no one would hear his self-admission of weakness. "I really should have tried to keep in touch..."

Lester stiffened abruptly. Clearly, something was wrong in the world – here he was musing about him losing connection with Jenny Lewis (of all people!) yet simultaneously sending her on a long mission overseas without any means of contacting the ARC (officially or unofficially) at all. Something had to be done, and it had to be done today.  
James Lester got off his armchair, stopped procrastinating, and went out to do something...

* * *

"So," Abby turned to Connor, "that has been an-an-"

"Ankylosaurus, or one of its' closest relatives, I would say," Connor replied. "That would've been even cooler if we had a way back...or at least with Danny..." he trailed miserably away...

"Connor, chin up!" Abby spoke, trying to sound perkier than she thought. "I mean, how hard could it be?"

"The raptors died out... approximately 70 million years ago BC," Connor said sadly, "and the ankylosaurus appeared 71 million years ago BC and died out along with the other dinosaurs when the meteorite hit the Earth-"

"Um," Abby said, as the involuntary vision of dying-out alongside the strange and alien-looking dinosaurs in a meteorite explosion briefly overwhelmed her mind, "that's, still, what – 6 million years of margin, right?"

"Yeah, 6 million years to die out, like the dinosaurs were doing," Connor said slowly, "and look – quetzalcoatlus!" He pointed skywards, where several huge winged creatures were gently float-ing through the skies, away from the prehistoric woodland. "The last members of the proud pterosaur line, and the biggest creatures to have ever brave the sky – well, as far as the past goes, the future may be different, what with giant beetles and what-not."

"Right," Abby nodded dutifully, glad to see Connor no longer look so depressed about their rot-ten luck. "The biggest creatures, what else?"

"Not much, actually," Connor admitted sheepishly, "I mean we're the first people to have ever seen them alive, you know?"

"Oh, right," Abby said, feeling a bit sheepish herself. "So, uh, see anything else that's local and non-threatening?"

"Well," Connor said, cheering up even more, "see the animals grazing in the clearing slightly outside the forest? Those are duckbilled dinosaurs, either anatotitans or edmontosaurs, and they are some of the most well-known true dinosaurs that there were, or are-"

"Yeah, two are wandering a bit away from the main herd-" Abby's voice trailed away simultane-ously with Connor's, as a massive, brutish thing burst out of the trees not far from where they were sitting, all legs, tail and jaws.

"And that's a T-Rex, also known as the tyrant lizard king," Connor said in a flat voice. "Abby, give me a hug, please?"

Abby just wordlessly complied.

* * *

"Ah, Jenny, I'm glad to see that you're getting along well with Ms. Page and captain Becker," James Lester appeared before the impromptu quartet as they were leaving the SAS quarters. "Can I speak to you for a moment, please?"

"Certainly," Jenny said, looking with curiosity at her leader – or was it former leader? She wasn't quite sure where she stood in the center's organization anymore: she did rather work under Caroline Steele, who was a part-time reserve employee of the center, so what did that make her? "Go on."

"Look," James Lester began, sounding rather unsure of himself than ever before, "I realize that you realize that I am aware about Heathrow's hullaballoo earlier today, correct?"

Becker and Sarah looked rather sheepish, while Caroline and Jenny... didn't. "So," Lester con-tinued, "first of all, try not to repeat something like that when you'll be abroad, all right? If you let another dinosaur rampage through the Pearson airport, the prime minister and others will probably crucify us all."

"Pearson? Where's that?"

"It's one of Canadian airports, and the closest one to ROM, where you'll be able to investigate the evidence directly, and your liaisons will drop it off as well," Lester said, "by 'it' I mean the bone weapon."

"Yeah, about it – is it really the bone of that animal professor Alexander claimed to be or not?" Sarah spoke up, after glancing sideways at Becker.

"Yes, it is," Lester said, apparently not noticing the interaction between the two, "believe me, I had it double-checked, especially since we got live mammoth DNA right here – and it was com-pletely different. Professor Ellenton was very excited when the differences have shown." He paused, "anyways, where was I?"

"The airport?" Jenny said helpfully.

"Right. You'll be seeing several more after Pearson, for you'll be travelling across the country, and boy, is Canada a big country!.." Lester shook his head. "So, remember that you're the back-up team, even when Danny and the other two come back... so please, don't mess up, don't be heroes, and don't, well, die – or cause international incidents, all right?"

"You're worried about us, aren't you?" Jenny said, with a small, albeit mischievous smile on her face.

"Yes, I suppose I am," James replied unexpectedly loud, his voice carrying odd overtones in it. "Things were just getting back on track after that incident with Jack Maitland, when Helen had to get involve and shake all up again – not even the fact that she got rid of Christine Johnson in the process can redeem what she has done... I hope that Danny and others catch up to her and bring her to justice!"

"Maybe," Caroline spoke before the others could, her voice sounding odd as well, "but I wouldn't bet on it – she sounds like a really slippery character. Besides, we do not think that she's behind this."

"Exactly," Becker spoke up quickly, "this doesn't seem to be her mode of operation at all!"

For several minutes Lester just looked at the rest of 'Jenny's Team', and then recollected himself. "Just remember what I told you, and... try to keep in touch every week that you're there," he said slowly. "Good luck, the four of you."

As he left his back-up field agents behind, he thought he heard either Sarah or Caroline say: "You know, he's really a good man," but didn't stay behind to listen.

* * *

Things went sort of downhill after the tyrannosaurus' attack – the animal had been built quite a bit different than the giganotosaurus they had once had to drive back seemingly a long time ago – much more stocky, a bit shorter and smaller, and sounding rather like a freight train on LSD; in short, a terrifying neighbour to be close to.

And yet, once the initial shock has faded, and Abby had hugged him as hard as she could, Connor began to enjoy himself a bit once again – after all, this was experience of a life time, seeing the dinosaurs live, and walking alongside them! If only this wasn't going to be a permanent de-velopment, then he would really going to be happy-

Suddenly, Abby stared and whirled around: for a moment, she felt as if someone has been watching them, for a moment, she thought that the still forest winds had carried traces of mocking, yet painfully familiar laughter...

_To be continued..._


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: Almost none of the characters are mine, but of Impossible Pictures.  
Note: Some spoilers from the official series._

**Chapter nine**

Flying in a plane, Becker mused, was really comfortable, when one was flying first class, all ex-penses prepaid by the government. True, he didn't have any champagne on ice or whatever, some social niceties and rules of undertaking had to be followed, after all, but still, after having experienced several army-related flights, Becker was more that impressed by the difference, and was certainly enjoying it to an immense degree.

Unfortunately, there was a large splash of vinegar in all of this honey – Sarah Page. The archae-ologist turned ARC researcher was nowhere near enjoying the luxuries of their flight as Becker was, and that bothered Becker somewhat: he did like Sarah, and while he was sure that the feel-ings weren't reciprocated, her discomfort bothered him somewhat in a friendly way...

And then, before Becker could confront Sarah and offer her his help, he saw the latter move closer to Jenny Lewis and her new partner, that Caroline woman. To make matters even more unpleasant – relatively speaking, of course – Becker also saw the RCMP colonel move towards his seat with a clear intent to talk.

Becker's formerly cheerful mood soured.

* * *

"Jenny, can I talk to you?"

"Certainly, Sarah, please seat down."

Still, Sarah cast a furtive, cautious glance at the other ARC woman, Caroline Steele, who seemed to be engrossed in her reading material – a sight-seeing guidebook of Canada, with the wide open chapter on the province of Ontario, where their flight was landing.

"Jenny, look," she nervously began, "I, I mean, we, we haven't been-"

"Sarah," Jenny firmly interrupted the other woman, "stop. We've been over this before, remem-ber?"

"No, we weren't!" Sarah said, feeling oddly impassionate. "We were about to, but James Lester-"

"Sarah, do you really want to do it, or you want to do it because it's appropriate?" Jenny sud-denly stiffened.

"Uh, both?" Sarah suggested meekly, visibly wilting. "Um, it all sounded so simpler in my head-"

"It usually does," Caroline nodded, as she snapped her guidebook shut. "Jenny, remember what I told you? It's a two-way street after all – oh, wait, you told me. Come on, let the archaeologist off the hook already – remember, what Lester told us? We're representing the British govern-ment abroad in this mission or something?"

"Oh fine," Jenny released her own irritation with a huff. "Sarah, come on, sit down and let's have a talk or something."

Sarah blinked and sat down. Then she looked at the other two women and blinked again. "Are you two-" she began, still unsure of her conversational footing with them.

"No," Jenny's voice was once more abrupt, "we're not. But we've worked together for a while now, and it's a small business, so we rather have a good idea as to how each other ticks – Jackie too."

"Who's Jackie?"

"My other assistant," Caroline explained, still irritated. "A pleasant enough person, but with a sense of humour that is not quite funny: for example, when Jenny began to work, she put on Demis Roussos' song 'from souvenirs to souvenirs'."

"And the catch here is?"

"Shouldn't the lyrics 'and now loneliness has come to take your place/I close your eyes and see your face' be a big enough clue to you?" Jenny said savagely.

"Oh!" Realization hit with a vengeance, "oh! You really... don't like Danny, do you?"

"No," Jenny said flatly, "I mean, he's probably what the ARC needed and he's a better leader than I was – but he isn't Nick, you know..." she paused. "You like him, however – don't you?"

Sarah opened her mouth to retort, when she realized that Jenny was looking past her, at Ancona Muirkirk, who has decided to join their discussion after all.

* * *

"Uh, hello," Becker said, unsure of how to deal with their RCMP liaison. "I'm guessing that the professor's enthusiasm got the best of you, eh?"

"Pretty much so, yes," Winters nodded in agreement. "I don't know him all that well, or the OPP officer Muirkirk, but at least she's on the quiet side, and not the endless fountain of pointless en-thusiasm like Ellenton is."

"You don't agree with him at all, do you? It's personal, I believe," Becker said slowly, looking at the other man.

"Yes," Winters nodded, "it is. Clark and Grant were the best men in my department, and I've send them to their deaths, clearly unprepared."

"Uh-" though it probably wasn't the best time, but Becker noticed the discrepancy in Winters' logic, but the latter ignored him and went on with his monologue.

"The two of them had dealt with many challenges, though – from illegal immigrants from the States, to political separatist-terrorists, to foreign poachers and smugglers – so who could've thought that what appeared to be a simple poaching case would end so, so gory?"

Becker held his tongue and wisely restrained himself from pointing out that the case was no-where near ending yet, but decided against it: Winters was working himself into a state – and thus entering a territory that was rather unknown to Becker at large: he had seen other men, other commanders, lose their subordinates when a seemingly simple situation grew mortally complicated in a blink of an eye, but had no idea of how to comfort one of them.

Rather pleadingly, feeling overwhelmed, Becker stole a glance towards the direction of his co-workers, but no luck: they were having a conversation with a Canadian liaison of their own.

* * *

"Yes I have, sort of," Ancona said, smiling guiltily, "but that's not the reason why I am here, really. I just, I just want some expert suggestions as to what we might be facing off."

The other three exchanged looks: though they had expected this, they weren't going to enjoy talking about it either. "Look," Jenny finally said, seeing how the others were keeping silence, "the truth is... we're not the best educated group of the ARC's field agents, and honestly, we also suspect that you're right about what you're not admitting."

Ancona just blinked, and so did Sarah and Caroline.

"All right, let me try again," Jenny said with a sign, realizing that she was speaking like a profes-sional bureaucrat at the probably the least appropriate time in her career. "There are several levels or factors in an ARC job. First of all, there are the prehistoric animals – the mammoths, the sabre-tooth cats, the dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, and so on. They are just animals, though exotic and unusual, and potentially deadly – certainly very powerful without a doubt, but still animals. Dealing with them is essentially glorified and overcomplicated wild life control – just think, for example, of the morning's dinosaur as a grossly oversized and stupefied racoon, and you're set."

Ancona blinked. Somehow the thought of comparing a dinosaur, or even a mammoth, to a ra-coon, did not come naturally to her.

"Not that it's that simple in practice," Jenny took pity on the Canadian. "The ARC's mammoth, for example, is probably a lot smarter than a racoon, and is clearly more like an elephant...but in theory, that's how our interactions with prehistoric animals work, as opposed to the futuristic."

"The what?"

"The animals from the future – one of them has almost killed me... well, actually, it was a fungus, but it almost killed me just as easily as if it was an animal," Jenny's face clouded in thought. "An animal – make that several animals - from the future has killed several of our members at different times... the point is that when dealing with arrivals from the future, we can identify them and predict their behaviour much more poorly than with the prehistoric ones, and thus they are proportionally more dangerous, than, say, dinosaurs – however, they're still animals (unless they're fungi instead), and thus we can generally outthink, outmanoeuvre and capture them – or kill them off instead. It's the third source of problems, the human factor, that's the most difficult one."

"The human factor," Ancona slowly repeated.

"Yes. There are people who do not work in the ARC yet are already aware of the time anomalies, like the one through which the dinosaur came into the airport, and so had our mammoth. These people tend to follow their own agendas, and these agendas usually run to the contrary of the ARC-"

"Uh, excuse me, but we're not dealing with the ARC, you must have forgotten-"

"No, she hasn't," Caroline said flatly, "officer Muirkirk, just think. The trap used to kill one of the Mounties was insane, yet ingenious at the same time: only a human brain could have devised something like that – a totally insane human brain, of course. This pretty much eliminates all sorts of animals, including wild elephants and chimps from the suspects, so at best, we'll have to deal with some sort of a Neanderthal, or maybe our direct Cro-Magnon ancestor, and at worst, it will be one of our contemporaries, deranged after a long trek through various time epochs...or one of humanity's future descendents. So, take your pick and order a drink – it won't get much better but most certainly much worse."

There was a pause, as the other women, not just Ancona, stared at Caroline, who stared back at them, her gaze flat and emotionless, not unlike her vocal tone. Before, however, any questions or counter-arguments there was a dinging sound and a flashing light, indicating that the plane was about to land, and the passengers had to fasten their seatbelts as they returned to their seats.

Needless to say, it was a very quiet landing indeed.

_To be continued..._


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: Almost none of the characters are mine, but of Impossible Pictures.  
Note: Some spoilers from the official series._

**Chapter ten**

Toronto, Becker had decided, was a very green city, especially compared to London. The Pear-son airport, for example, was proportionally smaller than the Heathrow, though still built rather like Coruscant from Star Wars, and much farther outside Toronto's proper city limits, again unlike its' British counterpart – and that was before the green factor came in.

So far, the trip from the airport to ROM was going through external highways rather than city streets, yet all around them, divided by concrete roads and bridges, vegetation abounded. Grasses, shrubs, even the occasional lonely tree – together they composed more greenery than most British highways Becker had ever seen in his life. It was...impressive, and they haven't quite seen any of the famous local sights yet. Not that he and the others were likely to see them, but still, it would be nice to do just that, after all...

Behind him, Jenny Lewis was sitting in one of the rear seats, musing much gloomier thoughts. Caroline's mini-rant on the levels of human versus animal had cut not merely close to the truth, but have pretty much exposed it: the greatest hardships and challenges that the ARC ever had to deal with, were connected people: Leek, and Christine Johnson, and always, always – with Helen Cutter. That woman seemed to have more lives than a cat and more tricks to use for an escape than a fox – and to make things worse, she seemed to have her own agenda, her own plans and a rather intelligent and somewhat charismatic personality – a formidable adversary, put otherwise. And speaking of Helen...

"You don't suppose that she's behind this?" Jenny asked Becker, startling the latter (he'd been admiring the view outside). "Because in my experience-"

"Mine too," Becker nodded, quickly understanding Jenny's gist, "and generally speaking, this attack didn't seem her style: at least the second death was purely senseless violence, and Helen's violence tends to make sense, even if just to her; plus, well, don't forget that Danny and the oth-ers are on her trail as we speak."

"Uh, excuse me, but of whom are you talking about?" colonel Winters decided that it was the perfect time to join in on the conversation, startling the other two.

"Well, has our boss, James Lester, talked to you about anyone in particular?" Jenny countered that question with a question.

"No, no one I can think off..."

"Then our conversation isn't important either," Jenny said flatly, unwilling to discuss Helen Cut-ter if Lester hadn't discussed her either. "Anyways, I and the others were wandering, just what is the plan, now that we're here?"

"Well," colonel Winters still seemed unhappy with Jenny's shift in the conversation but decided to go along anyways, "first we return to the ROM, and then we settle some bureaucratic issues, acclimatize ourselves to the time shift-"

"Wait, time shift?" Becker involuntary stiffened.

"Yes," Jenny gave her subordinate a hard look. "London and Toronto lie in different time zones, and the Mackenzie Mountains lie in another one still. I'm guessing that colonel Winters doesn't want us asleep all day, right?"

"Exactly," the RCMP officer nodded. "Don't want the same thing for myself – we're all in one boat, you know? Plus," he lowered his voice in an almost comradely conspiracy, "it will also help resolve the leadership issues. I am sure that officer Muirkirk is a fine police officer, but honestly, her status here was just as a liaison in a bid for a better co-operation between our governments due to her involvement with Mr. Quinn; without him, her presence here becomes redundant, and even more so when we'll arrive in the mountains – it's quite out of OPP's jurisdiction, you know?"

"And while we're on this topic, is this going to be a purely RCMP investigation or what?" Becker spoke up.

"Pretty much so...but not for the reason you probably assume," here the RCMP colonel flushed slightly. "The truth is that in the territories the police corps does not maintain a particularly strong presence outside of the bigger cities, and as for Nunavut-! Furthermore, the mountains make a natural border between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, and their police forces will be involved in a steady battle about whose jurisdiction and responsibility it will be, so the police's involvement in this will be mostly token, at least during the initial stages and the actual hard work."

"And the government? The military?" Becker pressed on for the obvious reasons.

"So far it is not considered a sufficient emergency to warrant the involvement of the army, and hopefully, it'll stay this way as well," Winters replied.

"Fair enough... but there is someone aware in Ottawa that it's probably something more than just a crazy murder?" Jenny asked.

"Of course," Winters nodded, "once we got the ROM scientists involved, it was only a matter of time, so yes, we'll probably meet our government's representative there as well. Anything else?"

Jenny and Becker exchanged glances – somehow meeting a potential and Canadian version of Lester didn't seem too exciting.

* * *

A man was walking through the city streets, dressed in rather military-style trousers and heavy, steel-shod boots. He also wore a vest and fingerless gloves, and a jacket on top of this whole en-semble – in short, an eccentric figure, complete with sunglasses and a sombrero hat. Other people, who were passing by him, gave the stranger a berth, as if instinctively avoiding something unpleasant and alien, and various animals, both wild and domestic, gave him an even wider as they smelled what people couldn't smell – that this man wasn't a part of the human race at all, not anymore...

However, the mysterious stranger was ignoring their reactions for the moment and instead was concentration on the building of the Royal Ontario Museum – or, to be more precise, at the ga-rage at the rear entrance, where several cars were arriving.

"It's show time!" he cheerfully chuckled.

* * *

"All right everybody! Stick closer to the cars and to the retrieval and security teams! That carved bone is important, it's probably the greatest find of ROM up to date!" Professor Ellenton cried out jubilantly. "Therefore, you must be careful with it!"

"You sure that you cannot cover the scientific research when we land in the mountains?" Caro-line whispered to Sarah. "If the good professor's underlings are just as perky and happy, this is going to create some very unnecessary tension."

Sarah opened her mouth to criticize Caroline about treating and judging people so callously, but then a realization hit: with a professional palaeontologist around, her own position would become redundant, and honestly, Sarah didn't want that, for in lieu of recent events she wanted nothing more but to matter, and with a professional palaeontologist around, that would be difficult. And so, Sarah Page kept her mouth shut and remained silent as the garage's door slid open with a clang... and a tangy smell of blood assaulted her nostrils and those of others.

* * *

Several streets away the stranger in sombrero stiffened in anticipation and began to slow circle around the building, inching ever closer to where the action was about to take place.

* * *

By now, Sarah was no stranger to death, she had seen various people – mostly her co-workers at the ARC – die in various ways, and the smell of blood was always the same, tangy and metallic, always leaving a sour taste in her mouth, yet now, being a stranger in a strange land, this, some-how, hit her harder than the usual.

Suddenly, her greater awareness returned, and she realized that Caroline has thrust something in her hands – another shotgun. "I, uh, thanks, but I-"

"Just make sure that there isn't anyone familiar to you within the next three meters, point the end with the hole at your goal and press the trigger on the lower side of the barrel," Caroline sug-gested helpfully. "You got only two shots right now, but we're talking grapeshot, so unless it's built like a freaking bulldozer, it will most likely hurt like Hell."

Sarah felt her cheeks grow warm in embarrassment. "Shouldn't you give it to Jenny instead?"

"Jenny's with Becker and his men – they got her covered," Caroline pointed to the frontal car. "Let's go and join them, shall we?"

Wordlessly, Sarah complied.

* * *

Surprisingly, it took professor Ellenton's brain several moments to realize as to what must have happened in the museum's garage and what that smell was, and why most of the other people stiffened, and began to reach out and grab their weapons.

Unfortunately, it was at this moment that the inner divisions among the group became blatantly obvious – the RCMP clustered around Winters, the OPP around Muirkirk, the ARC around Jenny and Becker, and the few museum security personnel around professor Ellenton. Then sev-eral moments passed, and a pair of creatures began to emerge from the garage's darker innards.

Jenny, and many other people, just gaped. The animals were roughly dog-sized, though with proportionally shorter legs, and with really big heads, or rather jaws that spawned especially large and protruding canine teeth. Amazing, though no external ears were visible but the beasts were covered in short, brownish fur, and had genuine whiskers on the upper lips of their mouths.

"Theropods!" professor Ellenton seemed to have recovered some of his old upbeat attitude. "Smaller-sized ones, but still, it's amazing!"

Actually, the creatures weren't that small, being almost a meter in length and probably around 10 to 18 kilograms in weight, but that point became moot very quickly, as the third animal attacked from the right side, slamming into the knot of humans, and sinking its' oversized teeth into the professor's side. The next moment, the first pair joined the attack as well, slamming into the bro-ken group of men like a pair of smallish missiles, and scattering them like tenpins. Becker, how-ever, had the ill-luck of having another one of the animals land directly on him, snapping its massive jaws... at Becker's firearm, rather than at his flesh, not that it helped Becker any, as with a simple twist of jaws the theropod tore the firearm out of Becker's grasp. Becker could see thin rivulets of discoloured liquid drip down from the beast's oversized canines, could feel its' stink-ing breath on his face...and then there was thunder.

Well, actually, it was just Sarah Page, discharging her weapon into the sky. Pieces of several gulls dropped down almost immediately, hitting the theropod that was attacking Becker on the head, startling it further – to the point at which it fled, followed by its two cohorts, leaving the humans on their own.

And professor Ellenton rather dead.

Well, not only him, for that matter: one of the security personnel was lying not far from his boss, his face locked in a grimace of pain, a large pool of oddly discoloured at blood having dripped from the wounds on his leg.

"I think," Becker said in the following silence, "that these creatures are poisonous as well, like snakes or something."

"Some dinosaurs had bacteria in their bite, like the Komodo dragon, but these animals weren't dinosaurs," Sarah said in a shaky voice as Caroline reloaded her shotgun. "Uh, what are you doing?"

"Reloading the weapon," Caroline said matter-of-factly.

"Um," Sarah looked at the broken-up gull corpses, "that won't be necessary, maybe I'll just stay here and-"

"Of course you're staying here!" Winters snapped. "This isn't your jurisdiction!"

"Nor yours!" Ancona Muirkirk snapped at him. "This isn't RCMP business-"

"Of course it's RCMP business, it's a part of the same business."

"Just in case those two get their act together, what's the strategy?" Becker turned to Jenny.

"I don't know," she admitted, "Caroline, they look and act a bit like wild dogs, any idea?"

"They're built rather like the basset hounds," Caroline shrugged. "We got to hit them low, I suppose. Tranquilizer or regular shot?"

"It's their call," Becker said, pointing to the arguing police officers, "and just for the record? When the city police force will arrive here, it'll be worse."

"Ah, excuse us," a new voice interrupted the ARC's weapon master, "but this is technically our jurisdiction for the moment."

There was a pause, as the ARC members stared at the new speaker – one of the museum's security personnel who had remained at the scene and not fled during the attack. "Your jurisdiction?" Jenny repeated, curiously.

"Y-yes, this is the museum's ground and all..."

Jenny exchanged looks with the others. "Well, we cannot just stand there while prehistoric crea-tures are killing people, even if we are foreigners... let's do it. Tranquilizers only, though, since this isn't really our jurisdiction."

"And how are we going to flush them out? Isn't there an alternative exit from this box?" Caro-line couldn't help but ask.

"At this time of the day it's closed," the security guard said, wincing, "plus we actually told our members on the inside to lock those doors."

"Fine," Jenny said firmly, let's try this. "Becker – you and your men get ready to hit them low!"

"And how are we going to flush them out-?" Becker's question trailed away as he watched Jenny take the shotgun from Sarah, walk over to the side of the garage, adjust the angle of the shotgun appropriately, and fire at the garage's ceiling.

The resulting shot was even more thundering than before, as it took place in an enclosed space, and before long Becker and others could see the theropods running around, half-stunned towards the only escape route that they had – through the original exit. This time, though, the humans outside were prepared for them, and tranquilizer darts flew through the air, hitting the prehistoric creatures into their jaws, heads and forequarters. Within moments, all three creatures were collapsed and unconscious.

"And that," Jenny said with finality that she hadn't felt for a long time, "is the usual procedure back at the ARC. Any questions?"

It was at that point the Toronto's city police had arrived, and things had become really messy.

_To be continued..._


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: Unless the characters are original, they belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter eleven**

The situation, Jenny mused as she carefully stood to a side, "supervising" the tying-up of the three theropods by the museum's security forces, brought a new meaning of the word "chaos" and a new understanding of Lester's security policy.  
The interactions between the various police forces of the country were disorganized, to say the least: the agents of Winters' and Muirkirk just stood there behind their superiors as the latter ar-gued as to whose responsibility and case this was, and the Toronto city police just tried to get a word in edgewise – and everybody ignored the museum's security personnel, which wasn't that surprising to Jenny, as practically everywhere the private security sat on the lower end of the law enforcement totem pole, unless it was a really specific emergency – like, say, now.

Jenny frowned and began to sidle closer to the personnel, intent on talking to them and possibly even confronting them somewhat, when Caroline came over to her instead and thrust something to her. "What is it?" Jenny asked.

"The permission papers for the shotgun, plus your passport," Caroline said curtly. "Since we've already seemed to have created an international incident, might as well try to cut down on smaller embarrassments from the start."

"Thanks," Jenny nodded, and then paused. "What's Sarah's doing?"

"Searching through Connor's database for a better identity of the animals," Caroline shrugged. "The late professor identified them as theropods, but that's not good enough – what's a theropod, anyways?"

"I have no idea," Jenny admitted, "though it sounds kind of familiar – maybe Nick has mentioned them once ago," her face fell. "Anyways, uh, at least the animals seem to be under control, so maybe we should go over to Becker and Sarah instead and see what Sarah has researched for ourselves, eh?"

Before Caroline could respond, a small, somewhat stout, bespectacled woman burst from the still-open garage, flanked by some more museum security staff. "Mr. Lazrev," she snapped at the original security leader, "what's with the weird illumination in the garage? And what's with the strange..." her voice trailed away as she saw the tranquilized and tied-up theropods for what they really were. "But that's impossible! They're extinct!"

Caroline and Jenny exchanged looks and began to edge slowly over to Sarah and Becker.

* * *

The man was carefully standing next to a McDonald's™, still few streets away from the museum and the scene of carnage, but distance didn't bother him: even with his specialized glasses on, his vision was still rather subpar during this time of the day, but his ears and nose completely compensated for this, and so he could follow the conversation as if he was right over there instead.

Slowly, he smiled underneath his thin handlebar moustache, sat at an external table, and began to observe the second act of the drama unfold – it wasn't his hour yet.

* * *

"Becker, Sarah?" Jenny spoke quickly. "There might be a time anomaly in the garage, explaining from where these animals came in the first place." She paused, realizing that she stated the obvious, and then pressed on all the same. "Have you narrowed the possibilities into what time period it could lead?"

"Uh, Connor's database suggests that the theropods lived during late Permian and early and middle Triassic," Sarah said slowly. "Some lasted into the late Triassic as well, but they were much smaller than these ones, and besides," she turned to the other two women, "since Becker claims that they might be venomous, I think that we've been dealing with some early Triassic therapsids after all."

"Not therapods, then?" Caroline asked.

"Um, therapsids are a suborder of theropods – just don't ask me how that works," Sarah said, wincing. "Anyways, uh, you said something about a time anomaly?"

Caroline and Jenny just looked at the direction from which they came, seeing how the woman from the museum had stopped staring at the downed animals, whatever they were, and instead was staring at them. "Um, Sarah?" Jenny said, feeling suddenly like her older, less self-confident self, "I think we're about to find out."

* * *

Becker was feeling rather uncomfortable by this time in the day: on one hand, the situation was so familiar to him by now, that it was almost painful: the animals may have been unusual, but no more so than a dinosaur or a mammoth – something that he was used to deal with by now.

Furthermore, the time anomaly may have become a complication, but not particularly so – they have dealt with time anomalies in the past, and have brought some disassembled equipment to deal with them, if such a situation arose, but-  
Here was the main reason for Becker's discomfiture: they were essentially strangers in a foreign land, with roles of more passive than active participants, yet the last hour or so has been anything but passive on their part, and that worried him – there was no need to aggravate their local allies... or were their foreign allies instead? So troublesome and not what he wanted to get involved with, either.

"Uh, excuse me," the female museum worker, meanwhile, had walked over to them, "but Mr. Lazrev over there says you're the ones who know what's going on around here."

"Well, yes, but colonel Winters had pretty much told us that it was his show, and so had Mr. Lester, our own boss," Caroline spoke, before Jenny could, "so maybe you should go and talk to him."

"Please, the man just brought over this crazy, oversized bone, and Alexander got stuck investigating it, and got really overexcited, and- where is he now anyways?"

"Uh, I think you should ask Mr. Lazrev about the good professor," Caroline said firmly. "Anyways, you said something about a weird light in the garage? It wouldn't resemble a chromatically white disco ball, would it?"

"Yes and there's water coming from it, as well!"

The ARC crew just stared at the museum worker's last statement – now _that_ was something new.

* * *

For an unknown number of times in the last hour or so, Ancona Muirkirk felt like screeching into the sky: "This isn't happening! This wasn't how it was supposed to happen!" - for it wasn't, yet it did, starting from when they came to England and Danny Quinn wasn't there.

Contrary to Jenny's belief, Ancona Muirkirk wasn't particularly attractive to Danny Quinn: she had met the British policeman on his vacation slash leave, when he was forced to leave it, after his usual monthly 'temper tantrums' regarding his brother's demise became too hard and heavy for his co-workers to take. Consequently, the Englishman had been rather morose and not-too-pleasant when she had initially met him, but he had warmed up and lightened somewhat by the end of his leave, and they even exchanged e-mail addresses, just in case and to be polite.

And then, about a week ago, the incident in the Mackenzie Mountains took place, and while colonel Winters and his people were keeping quiet about it, unless it was necessary, their cargo to ROM was noticeable and important enough for OPP to get involved, and thus Ancona joined in on the procedures. And then, when it was discovered by Alexander Ellenton's men to be something not quite of this world or time – the bone, that is, not the Mounties' remains – she remembered some of the recent e-mails from Danny, and talked to her superiors, and talked to Danny, and then, suddenly, she was off to England alongside the RCMP colonel and the professor for some consultation and possibly even help, and-

And suddenly Danny wasn't there, and everything was rather falling to pieces instead, and there was water, and-

Ancona suddenly stiffened and looked back at the garage. There was water in there? What the Hell?

* * *

"How can there be water, of all things!" Jenny exclaimed rhetorically, as she and the others ob-served definite watery stains develop on the asphalt before the garage at an alarming rate. "This has never happened before!"

"Maybe there's a sea or at least a large river on the other end of the time anomaly," Sarah said slowly. "My bet is one a river, because the therapsids don't look like they came from the sea at all."

"That's impossible!" the museum worker exclaimed. "They cannot be therapsids – those animals are long extinct-"

"Lady," Caroline opened her mouth to say something scathing, but a new sound from the garage interrupted her, and the sound resembled a roar of a bull crocodile too closely for comfort.

"Sarah," Caroline shifted her tracks abruptly. "Were there any crocodiles at that time or what?"

"I am on it," the other woman said quickly, her fingers flying over the keyboard of her computer.

"Girls?" Becker said slowly, "I think I have a clue." He pointed to the garage, where a new crea-ture was emerging – not another therapsid, but rather a long-legged crocodile-like animal with a nasty overbite. "It must be a crocodile ancestor or something."

"Fire!" Winters shouted.

"Don't you dare! This isn't your place!" the museum worker shouted back. The RCMP colonel whirled towards her with a thunderous expression, but at that moment Caroline decided to fire her own shotgun – right over the animal. Once again, the shot was rather thunderous as far as shots go, and the crocodile's ancestor didn't like it at all – it turned around fled into the garage, the splashing sounds of its' footsteps cutting off abruptly as it fled back via the time anomaly back to its' own time.

"Found it!" Sarah spoke into an ensuing silence. "It's a proterosuchus, a distant relative of the crocodiles!"

"That's good, Sarah," Jenny said slowly, and then turned to the still shocked museum worker. "Can we, uh, bring some equipment into the garage? As per professor Ellenton's request, we brought to deal with just such an emergency."

"Where is he?" the latter just wailed. "I really need to talk to him now?"

"Talk to Winters instead," Becker said flatly. "Ms. Lewis, my men are bringing the parts out; Sarah, get ready to assemble it right – more water is coming out by the minute." It was getting bad fast.

* * *

Several streets away, the spy smiled. Now they were getting to the important staff!

* * *

The situation was deteriorating fast, and the cries of the hungry proto-crocodiles or whatever were not helping the situation any: though still distant, apparently from the other side of the time anomaly, it would be only a matter of time before another one of those reptiles came through – consequently, it wasn't time to debate, but to assemble Connor's original electromagnetic anti-time anomaly device and press the right button...

What happened then was a massive discharge – far more massive, blinding and deafening than anything ever experienced even by the ARC veteran present, namely Jenny Lewis. Clearly, water 'contamination' had reacted to the device's pulses, and with a vengeance! By the time the 'light and sound show' was over, the garage was empty – empty of water, empty of Triassic wildlife, and also empty of cars or anything modern – save for the actual time anomaly, now just hovering there in its' passive state.

"And that's why I wanted to make sure that we had clearance before we did anything," Caroline told Jenny as they gazed silently at the havoc they had unexpectedly created.

_To be continued..._


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All character, unless indicated otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures, not me._

**Chapter twelve**

In the following silence, one could hear a pin drop.

"Sorry," said the police officer at fault, who just gaped, when he saw the semi-pristine emptiness of the garage, "it's, I..." he trailed away under the others' gazes, and the silence returned once more.

"This, this is inconceivable! Mr. Lazrev!" the museum's representative wailed. "Where did this thing come from?"

"That thing is a time in the time stream, although of a different kind than the one we were used to dealing with," Jenny exhaled. "Just what has professor Ellenton e-mailed you about from England?"

There was a pause, and the older woman just seemed to explode. "And just where is Alexander?" she shouted.

"In the morgue, ma'am," the security officer – Lazrev – admitted. "One of those prehistoric animals had bit him right in the side – got Cudgeon as well."

"What? That man couldn't have died, not when he, when he..." it was clear that the woman was having some sort of a breakdown, and should probably lie down – at the very least. "The man has too much of unfinished business to just die! He just got his proof! He just e-mailed to us his proof! He just, he just-"

"Ma'am, please," colonel Winters was much more gallant than before, helping Lazrev to keep the latter's boss on her feet and stable. "You need to relax and, lie down somewhere else – we'll take it from here, honestly."

"You, you, you, you began this, with your bone and your corpses – I remember you, you, colonel Winters! You, you, you, it's your entire fault, I just know it!" tears fell off the woman's cheeks and dropped on the floor. And then, abruptly, she stopped and turned to Jenny Lewis and the latter's underlings and spoke in a more self-controlled tone. "Dear guests from England, I'm sorry about the situation, and thank you regarding the assistance with the situation that apparently has developed here prior to your arrival," she paused. "While I am temporarily unavailable, can you please ascend to our laboratory on the third floor? It's just across from the biologists' office, but please keep out of it – they have just acquired several of live African lungfish specimens and are very interested in keeping them alive and possibly breeding for a long time."

Nobody, including, Jenny, noticed how Caroline had temporarily stiffened when she heard the other woman mention lungfish. Jenny, however, felt some sort of a shift in the basement's air and glanced suspiciously at the latter, but Caroline managed to regain her self-control, and so Jenny's gaze noticed nothing.

* * *

The insides of ROM reminded Sarah quite a bit of the insides of her old place of work – the British museum, only built on a smaller, more compact scale, due to the differences in the overall e-ducation levels of the two countries. Sadly, realizing this did nothing to alleviate her sense of failure regarding the death of Professor Alexander as well as their decidedly flawed success regarding their management of their first foreign time anomaly.

"Do you, uh, have any ideas about what happened with the time anomaly?" she turned to her neighbour, who, naturally, had been Caroline Steele – the slightly younger woman lately hovered near her like some sort of an impromptu bodyguard, not that Sarah minded this after the therap-sid attack and capture. "I mean, they have never reacted as extremely as this one did."

"Water, Sarah Page, conducts electricity, which means it has reacted when our discharge affected the time anomaly, which was contaminated, sort of, by that liquid," Caroline said, rather uninterested, "and hence our complex situation now: a lot of property, both public and private, has been sucked into the time anomaly when we have de-activated it, and reactivating it will be very tricky, due both to the Triassic water and the animals that live them? What did you call them?"

"Oh, I don't remember, I think they were identified as basal archosaur reptiles, whatever that meant," Sarah shrugged more light-heartedly than she felt, "and please, call me just Sarah, okay?"

"Okay, Sarah," Caroline nodded. "Look, uh, I am not really feeling like myself right now, so can we talk... about anything you want, really, sometime later? Right now, I need to figure something personal instead."

"Oh... okay, I guess," Sarah muttered, feeling oddly dejected as her friendly overtures have been refused, and then she noticed Ancona Muirkirk looking at them with some concern and curiosity and glared at her instead – she really didn't feel like talking to incomplete strangers right now.

Fortunately, before this situation could get any worse, there was a dinging sound, and the elevator doors opened.

"We're here," Mr. Lazrev said.

* * *

"I am impressed, I am very impressed," Becker just whistled in admiration. "I mean, our own labs are impressive, but this is something else!"

"Yes, it is, isn't it," the laboratory worker who greeted them as they exited the (service) elevator agreed. "These are probably some of the best labs in the entire Canada-" he paused, "and on a completely unrelated note, I thank you for your quick actions. I mean, we saw what was going on from the windows, and had phoned the city police, but without your expert knowledge and efficiency-"

"Please don't mention it," Jenny said firmly, half-turning to the RCMP colonel. "Colonel Winters, not to sound callous, but-"

"My thoughts exactly," Winters nodded back. "Look, we're back with the bone, so can I and officer Muirkirk go and talk to whoever's in charge of paperwork here to finish it? With professor Ellenton gone, well..."

"Yes, yes, of course," the laboratory worker nodded, his bespectacled face noticeably redder. "Colonel, officer, if you don't mind-?"

"Colonel Winters' remaining evidence is in the sub-room 20B," Ancona Muirkirk apparently ignored the two men and turned Jenny Lewis and the others, "unless it has been moved."

"No, it had not!" the laboratory worker snapped, as the RCMP colonel – and his people – began to redden in their turn. "Officer Muirkirk, please!"

It was Jenny's turn to suppress of groan of frustration and depression: Ellenton, the most likeable of their Canadian acquaintances was gone, and the remaining two were back in their unofficial power struggle – just great.

And they still haven't met the Canadian counterpart of Lester – if such a creature had time to politically evolve. Just great.

* * *

Moreover, when Jenny saw the remainder of evidence of colonel Winters', not only her bad mood increased, she – as well as the others on her team, most likely – began to understand the latter's irritation both with the late professor and his still-living co-workers: the deaths of the two Mountie agents must have been awful.

As Jenny just stared with mute horror at the charred remains of Clark Hill, Becker beckoned Caroline closer, and the pair approached the corpse, silently observing it.

After several long moments, Caroline spoke up. "And I still say that no dog has done this – the bite shape, the teeth mark – they are somehow wrong."

"That makes two of us – maybe more, because whoever was investigating the corpse didn't think so either," Becker echoed from the other side of the corpse. "He, she or they made an impromptu cast of the jaws that clanged and the teeth that bit, and if you come over to my side, you can see it."

And Caroline did just that, followed by Jenny, who had an attack of morbid curiosity, and Sarah, who didn't want to be left behind. Sure enough, there was a plaster-of-Paris impromptu cast of the aforementioned teeth and jaws, and no, they didn't look canine, in fact, even the poor copy of the bone structure seemed.

"If I wasn't hungry, I'd be sick," Caroline said flatly. "These jaws look like some sort of human jaws with definitely inhuman teeth – sabre-tooth, maybe?"

"No," Jenny said firmly, "I've seen sabre-tooth's teeth, remember? These ones are all wrong, not to mention, not long enough."

"Not long enough? They would've probably reached the chin of the real thing!" Sarah cried, despite her best intentions, and then shrunk back, when everyone just stared at her. "Well, they would've," she said defensively.

"Yes, and a sabre-tooth cat's fangs were twice as long at least, proportionally speaking, plus they were somewhat curved, while these are straight," Jenny said matter-of-factly. "These ones don't look like sabres at all, more like stabbers or something like that."

"Great, now I can add 'vampire', to the list of subjects composed of werewolves and cannibalistic native ghosts slash psychosis victim," Sarah said irritably. "Caroline, do you have to prod it?"

"I'm not prodding it," Caroline shook her head, "I'm prodding the other set of jaws. What?" she asked seeing as the others recoiled. "We are supposed to be professionals or something, you know?"

"So what have you found, Ms. Mastermind?" Jenny said crossly.

"Well, I am not sure yet, but the teeth – the ones in the back – they're somehow different from human teeth. Somehow they mesh more closely together, and the jawbones seem to be different shaped too, though that might be just a faulty initial mould or something..."

"What are you doing?" Colonel Winters was back, as well as Ancona Muirkirk and the initial laboratory worker who greeted them at the elevator.

"Well, looking over the evidence, as we were intended to, right?" Jenny asked. "And on that topic, regarding the plaster-of-Paris model-"

"Yes?" The laboratory worker tensed.

"Can we have a model of a human skull, plus that of a matching lower jaw for comparison?"

"Oh, I see, here-" the laboratory worker quickly walked over to the row of locked lockers in the room and unlocked one of them. "I see that we are dealing with the professionals here, this is the path we took as well when we began to investigate the bite – I ought to give you the corresponding dog, wolf and puma skulls-"

"One at a time, please," Jenny said slowly. "We're currently interested in knowing how accurate is the copy – the jaw bones themselves in the back might differ from human jawbones, and so do the teeth, so we were wondering, was this difference here initially, or just a defect?"

"That's a good question, and honestly – it's a grey area even for us," the laboratory worker began, but colonel Winters interrupted him with his own cry:

"Just what are you getting at, here? I don't like what you're implying-"

"What Caroline here is implying," Jenny hurriedly said, "is that at least one of your men was killed by a prehistoric primate of sorts, instead of a wild dog or cat."

"Say what? The fangs-"

"Have you ever seen baboons in a zoo?" Caroline said calmly. "They're monkeys, yet their fangs are very, very impressive. And if you want to come up our family tree, then go to chimps and maybe gorillas – they are our closest living relatives, yet you do not want to have one bite you or wrestle with you, believe me. Maybe your perpetrator has brought some sort of a prehistoric and maybe carnivorous pet monkey or ape with him or her."

"That's an interesting theory, but unfortunately it has several flaws, starting with the teeth," the laboratory worker shook his head. "To understand, I suggest that you also look at the jawbones and teeth of the wolf and puma before jumping at conclusions."

"Mmm... maybe you should just leave the wolf – their jaws and teeth are a lot like the dogs', the more conservative breeds anyways, and these aren't dog teeth or jaws," Caroline said firmly.

"Well, that's probably so," the laboratory worker said absent-mindedly as he pulled out the bones he had mentioned, "but still-"

"Got to agree with her on this one," colonel Winters said gruffly. "I've seen wolf and puma bites and bones, and neither the marks nor your plaster copy resemble either. They don't resemble the ones one poor Clark, though they don't resemble human ones too!"

"Well, actually," the laboratory worker seemed embarrassed, "after checking the dentary patterns and general tooth shapes, we did come to a conclusion, that the patterns do resemble those of humans, but the teeth themselves resemble those of carnivores, you know?" He then pulled out a rolled-up sheet with the four tooth patterns and shapes drawn one almost on top of the other, for better comparison... and also several other casts, not of jaws and teeth, but of several odd foot-prints, definitely not human-shaped.

"Well?" the RCMP colonel turned rather smugly to Caroline and others. "Do they look like dog feet or what?"

"Judging from the lack of support from the guy behind you, I'd say no," Sarah said meekly, "so why don't we ask you instead?"

That took some wind out of Winters' sail. "Honestly, if it wasn't for the claws, it'd be more like a puma than a wolf's, but cats sheathe their claws," he admitted.

"The only cats that don't are cheetahs, even I know that," Becker said slowly, "but there's also no way a cheetah could exist in a Canadian mountain forest, right?"

"It's not a cheetah!" Winters exploded. "This was a completely different animal, and a dog or a wolf at that!"

"We've been over that! Tracks or not, the jaw to paw ratio does not compute!" Caroline snapped back.

"A-and besides, the footprints do not fully match canine or feline footprints of the appropriate size either. They look a bit like a hyena's footprints, but do not fully match them either! And then there's the question of size-"

"There's no way these footprints or jaws have belonged to a hyena!" Winters shouted, angry again. "Cheetahs, hyenas – get your mind of out of Africa already!"

"Don't interrupt!" the laboratory worker snapped back. "As I was saying, the size of the foot prints is proportionally greater than even a puma's or a wolf's – this was a massive animal, with height greater than that of a tiger! No digitigrade animal of Canada has that kind of height!"

There was a pause as everyone just digested this new factor. "Well," Jenny slowly said, "the teeth and jaws are definitely not those of a tiger, or a puma – your own bones and drawings prove that! Just what are we dealing with, here?"

Instead of a reply, they heard a crack of thunder from outsider – apparently, the weather already cloudy since their arrival has turned completely rainy and stormy by now.

"How about we get something from the museum's cafeteria instead – or not instead per se, but for some brain food?" Ancona Muirkirk asked meekly, speaking for the first time since the ani-mated discussion had started. "How's that for an idea?"

The others nodded in agreement, mentally weary – they didn't yet know or fully understand what they were getting themselves into...

_To be continued..._


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, not to me._

**Chapter thirteen**

There was a pause, and then generally everyone nodded in overall agreement – no one had any proper meals since their arrival in the Pearson airport, and that was several hours, so everyone was getting hungry.

"All right, then," the laboratory worker nodded, "we'll break for lunch for the moment. Any special requests?"

"Well, Caroline over there likes fish," Jenny said lightly, but the latter just shook her head.

"No, it's okay – I don't feel like fish for now, I'll have what everyone else is having," Caroline said with a smallish, and rather sad, smile. The words were quite innocent, yet Sarah noticed that Jenny tensed at them.

"Ah, excuse me," Jenny flashed her official smile, as she walked over to the darker woman and grasped her firmly, "can we have a moment to ourselves? We seem to have some issues to work out!" she grasped Caroline firmly by the upper arm, and began to lead the latter out.

"A couple, aren't you?" Winters said in a knowing tone.

Jenny glared at him with intensity worthy of Medusa the gorgon. "You wish!" she hissed in a tone of voice that would've stunned a small fish or frog at forty paces and left with Caroline in tow.

* * *

The approach to an unguarded service entrance was surprisingly easy: apparently, some people hadn't been able to grasp that time anomalies meant an accessible resource, and accessible re-source meant people intent on accessing it, including people who weren't very nice at all, people, who were able to go to any distance to get what they wanted...or to keep what they wanted pri-vate, or to acquire even more via the expenses of competition – but they will learn.

A smile broke on the intruder's face - a wide, cold, reptilian smile. He raised one hand – still clad in a fingerless glove and knocked hardly on the door.

One of the museum's workers opened it, as he was passing by – a nice timely piece of luck. Or not of luck, seeing how he had timed his knock to resound when the latter was passing; at any rate, when the unlucky flunky opened the door, he received a punch in the face that knocked him out cold... and the intruder was in the building.

Now the final act of the trilogy-drama could begin.

* * *

"Well, that was interesting," the laboratory worker began to wipe his glasses, trying to smooth the bump in the interactions by pure kinetic energy, "I'm guessing that your animal expert is a bit homesick, eh?"

"Something like that, yes," Becker shrugged, "but anyways, while we're waiting for lunch to ar-rive, can I ask one more question, regarding thinking outside the box: the theropods that had attacked us – could it be one of them instead?"

"Excuse me, what did you call them?"

"Well, I heard professor Ellenton call them theropods-"

"Ah!" the worker went red, "look. The late professor Alexander was a brilliant man, but whenever he got excited, he tended to make really embarrassing slips of the tongue, the kind that an amateur would make. In this particular instance, the animals are not theropods, which were, essentially, all the meat-eating dinosaurs that we know, but therapsids, animals much closely related to mammals than to the dinosaurs," he paused. "At any rate, these particular animals do not appear likely to have done the biting – as you can clearly see from the mould-"

"He didn't mean those animals exactly, maybe related specie?" Sarah piped up.

"As you can see from the mould," the worker wasn't backing down, "the teeth – their pattern, their structure and differentiation – are clearly mammalian, too much so to be of a therapsid. The catch would be figuring out which, and that – and the footprints aren't helping matter either." He took a deep breath, flushed and fell quiet.

Silence stretched, as the five people just looked at each other. And then the door to their room opened.

* * *

"All right, Caroline, what's wrong with you? Stop playing the strong and silent type and start co-operating! This isn't like you and I don't like it!"

"Jenny," Caroline calmly draped one of her arms over Jenny's shoulders, "remember the bedtime story?"

Jenny stiffened, as her angry and concerned look mutated into a concerned and scared one. "There were only so many stories I have heard... of which one you are speaking?"

"It concerns why I and Jackie have liked fish so much," Caroline said, almost purring. "Remember?"

Jenny quickly back-pedalled in her mind. "It's the lungfish, isn't it? You've started acting weird since you've heard them mentioned in the basement."

"Yes," Caroline nodded, "throughout my life, both in England and before, never had I had the opportunity to investigate that branch of the piscine family, and now that's it within my grasp-"

Suddenly, the lights died in the room, the only light that now came was from the windows. Instantly, Caroline grabbed Jenny and showed her into an adjoining room. "What the-" Jenny began but fell silent, when Caroline had hissed at her in shushing way and pulled out her spare tazer:

"We got trouble!"

* * *

For several minutes Jenny couldn't hear anything but her heartbeat, and then she realized that she really didn't hear anything besides her heartbeat – all of the background electric noises, like the sound of the museum's air conditioning had fallen silent.

Well, this was a blackout, so it was only natural, so... why was Caroline overacting about this? The whole tazer and hiding in closets... Jenny felt her body heat rise. "If you think that this will make me forget-" she paused, as she heard... she heard or smelled something, something wrong...

As Jenny mused, she noticed that in the glow emitted by the tazer, Caroline too seemed tense, too tense for this to be just a prank. "Look," she said quietly, "I can almost sense that something's wrong, right?"

Caroline nodded, her face a mask of tenseness, worry and concern. "Yes," she hissed, "there's something out there, I can feel it in my bones," she sounded almost hysterical by her genuine standards – not pretend ones, and that was bad. "Please don't get out yet."

The last time Caroline sounded like that, Jenny mused, was when they both almost died – well, when she almost died and Caroline almost got most seriously mutilated. In that case, creatures from the future, not past, were involved, and now-

_We're stupid, no, we're dumb, no, we're mentally lazy! _Jenny told herself. _We've been obsessing over prehistoric and modern animals – over the possibility of the Wendigo psychosis – over anything, really, but the possibility that this might be another guest from the far-off future had never really crossed our minds, because we didn't want to, and that kind of selected thinking could easily lead to lack of preparation and disaster... unless I'm reading too deep into this, and all of this is just a-_

There was a sound of a door opening in the distance, and followed by soft sounds of footsteps, slowly leading towards their meeting room.

In the darkness of their closet, Caroline caught Jenny's look and nodded in confirmation:

"Trouble."

* * *

The darkness had caught the others as flat-footed as Jenny and Caroline, yet due to different experiences in the past, that didn't trigger the exact mental processes as it happened with those two: instead, they just blinked and stared at each other, somewhat confused by this development.

"The storm isn't that bad, is it?" Sarah blinked in confusion.

"No, it isn't, plus the museum's built better than that to endure such weather conditions," Ancona echoed from Sarah's left. "Something is going on – where are your co-workers?"

"You mean Caroline and Jenny? They're probably outside, disoriented from the black-out," Becker answered, before Sarah could. "Somebody ought to go to the door and call them out, before they wander into the wrong room and get stuck there or worse."

"Yeah," Ancona said morosely, as she was the one closest to the door. "I'll do it-"

The door into the room chose to open at that moment, revealing, however, not a pair of women, but a single person, of male gender, most likely, entered the room.

"I'll be killing you now," he said in an odd, foreign accent, and raised a hand with a loaded fire-arm. "Good-bye now!"

* * *

The sound of footsteps was so soft that Jenny could even convince herself that she was imagining them. The creaking sound of the door opening was definitely more convincing and realistic. And the words "I'll be killing you-" were definitely not imagined at all – and Jenny knew what she had to do: she grabbed the tazer from Caroline and burst from the closet, seeing a tall and solid figure of a man standing right in the open doorway of that particular room.

Jenny thrust the tazer forwards and pressed the trigger, generating the electrical discharge, aiming for the small of the man's back – but the latter whirled around and smashed her in the side of her face instead, and so Jenny blacked-out and knew nothing else for the next little while.

* * *

"Good-bye now!" the man said in an undoubtedly foreign, yet unidentifiable accent...and then unexpectedly whirled around, lashing out with his other hand, or rather fist.

There was a sound of a body hitting the floor, and then another sound – of wood hitting flesh, right between the man's legs, as the shaky light in the hall could reveal. There was another sound – that of a gunshot... and that brought colonel Winters out of shock: he jumped up, pulling out his own weapon and firing it himself.

And yet he missed – somehow their assailant was now somewhere else in the corridor, and fired again. In some part of her brain, Ancona noticed that the discharge of the two weapons sounded rather similar, but the sound of the RCMP colonel grunting from pain made her forget that as she jumped into the corridor...

...only to be immediately tripped and fall onto the floor. As Ancona fell, she heard the assailant fire again, missing her head only because she was falling... okay, she stopping falling and just landed on the floor, hitting her nose hard despite the carpeting. Still dizzy from pain, she thought that she heard another solitary shot from a handgun... before it got drowned out by a rapid clutter of submachine gunfire.

* * *

When Jenny regained consciousness, it was all over, and Captain Becker was thanking his men for their rapid thinking, and Caroline was cooing to her dogs – a feat that caused Jenny to instinctively smile, which rapid turned into a wince, as the right side of her face felt like one giant bruise.

"Are you okay?" officer Muirkirk spoke from the next to her, sounding much more nasal than before. "He didn't shoot you, did he?"

"No, just hit me with a fist – that was enough, I'm afraid," Jenny said, turning around and see the OPP with a large ice pack on her nose. "You?"

"Tripped over you and fell face first on the floor – good thing too, or he would've blown my brains out," Ancona admitted. "Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome, I suppose."

"Now Winters wasn't so lucky – the perpetrator blew off two of his fingers before I tried to have a go at him," Ancona continued.

"What?"

"You heard me, that guy must have been a pro," Ancona continued, wincing from her new nasal tone. "The way he moved, the way he shrugged off that blow to his balls, the way how it took several submachine guns to bring him down – he wasn't like anyone I've ever met."

Jenny had heard enough. "Becker, Caroline!" she shouted. "Where's the corpse?"

"Out here, in the corridor, among the gathering of people, creating quite a stir," Becker called from back out in the corridor. "RCMP, OPP, the city police, Lazrev's people, and everybody else's uncle – they're all here."

"Send some men to guard it as well," Jenny barked a command. "Sarah, take a pointer, and the human skull and lower jaw – we need to make a point!"

Ancona just stared, but seeing Sarah promptly jump up and about, and then follow Jenny into the corridor, followed as well – if it came to making a point, she wanted to be there and on it personally too.

* * *

Becker didn't exaggerate – the corridor had become very crowded during the time that Jenny was out, and there were a lot of various uniforms on those people as well – but fortunately there weren't any reporters just yet. Still, the appearances of Jenny and Sarah, carrying a human skull and lower jaw, followed by the OPP's officer Muirkirk, created a stir.

"Ah, Ms. Lewis, are you all right?" it was that same laboratory worker, now even more red and flustered. "And what are you, ah, doing?"

"The job that we were brought here for," Jenny said curtly. "Sarah, the bones?"

"Here, and here's the pointer."

"Good. Now, officer Muirkirk, remember our earlier discussion about skulls, jaws and teeth?"

"Yes, and colonel Winters, once he's released from the museum's medical bay, will."

"Good, and here's the missing piece-"

Under Jenny's instructions, Sarah carefully out the human bones next to the new corpse's head and Jenny carefully used the pointer to open the latter's mouth, revealing a set of not-very-human teeth and even more inhuman tongue, quite a bit longer and thinner than it ought to have been. As a finishing touch, Jenny took off the corpse's heavily tinted glasses, revealing a pair of eyes that looked more like the eyes of a lion or a hyena than a human's.

"Mr. Lazrev!" Ancona Muirkirk barked a command of her own. "Get the DNA samples just as you have done with that carved mega-bone of Winters!"

And then all Hell broke loose.

_To be continued..._


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, not to me._

**Chapter fourteen**

Sarah realized that she was impressed. When she first met Jenny Lewis, the other woman had been rather dominated by the late Nick Cutter, and generally seemed to be a light-weight champion of the team, doing the less important or vital things, including spin doctoring and trying to defy the obvious. Now, however, Jenny Lewis was someone else, someone who was clearly intending to be the leader disregarding the others' opinion, as well as many other factors, and clearly succeeding in it as well – a figure worthy being treated with a cautious respect if anything.

Unfortunately, that also opened the topic as to where did she, Sarah Page, fit into this whole thing. Before, obviously, she sort of did the research, assisting Connor and Abby, while Danny, pretty much led them in the field. With Jenny, however, being back in action at least for now, and clearly in charge, this could create some sort of tension, and-

Sarah couldn't help but remember that it was interest in Jenny Lewis that brought Danny Quinn back to the ARC after Nick Cutter had died and Danny's own brother had been avenged, not in her. This meant, that should Danny and Jenny meet, she might be the one on the out, unless, of course, whatever tension between her and Caroline was sexual and not something else...

"Hey Sarah, are you all right?" Becker asked, concernedly, seeing that their team's back-up re-searcher seemed to be unusually quiet at this moment.

"What?" Sarah looked at the head of their armed forces, startled, "what?"

"You look kind of withdrawn," Becker repeated his question slash statement.

"Oh! Oh, well, I- I was just missing Danny and others," Sarah said quietly. "Connor, in particular, wouldn't have mixed up theropods, therapsids and therocephalians, now would he?"

"Sarah, come on – you heard Mr. Glasses – Professor Alexander tended to get himself confused when dealing with scientific terms whenever he would get excited," Becker said firmly. "Stop beating yourself and try look on the bright side: we're alive and unharmed, while several other people are not."

"When you put it like that," Sarah said, involuntarily grinning back at the man, "then yes, I feel better already," she paused. "But where did the dogs come from?"

"Initially, Lester made a business deal with Caroline Steele," Becker shrugged. "I'm not too sure of the reasons, but she began to provide us with trained dogs if it was necessary. Because usually it was not so – we tended to deal with creatures that didn't require tracking, or that Johnson woman was in the way, or something else – I guess the two of you just never had time or oppor-tunity to meet," he paused. "Of course, now that we'll be dealing with a very different situation, one that is located in the wilderness, plus one that takes place overseas, Lester decided that sending us with trained dogs is a must, and so, here they are, despite Caroline's protests that they are city dogs and wouldn't do well in a forest."

"So, is she here as the dog manager or trainer or whatever?" Sarah pressed on.

"No, as I was saying, she didn't want to go with us, or to send her dogs," Becker shook his head. "That Mountie colonel actually backed her up, saying that the RCMP already has dogs, and even more importantly, dogs specifically trained and adapted to the Canadian wilderness. Lester how-ever told everybody that Steele is coming with us as the modern animal expert – in other words, doing Abby's job, while you're doing Connor's..."

"Oh, I didn't think of that... Where was I when Lester was saying it?"

"Talking with Jenny about something or other," Becker shrugged, "and speaking of talking with Jenny, we better get ready to both talk and listen, because the second round of brainstorming is about to begin!"

Sarah shivered.

* * *

This time, the conversation took place not in a proper lab per se, but rather in something resembling an anatomical theatre, albeit one built on a smaller, more private scale. Sarah and Becker could see most of the already familiar faces there, including the two museum works and Lazrev, the apparent chief of their security. Conversely, though, colonel Winters was still absent, al-though the Mountie officer, who had been talking to the leader of the Torontonian city police, was there, apparently in his stead. The OPP officer Muirkirk was there in person, though, and so were a few other unknown people, apparently members of the ROM or a similar institution.

For a while, as Sarah and Becker quietly took their seats in the ARC's area of the theatre, there was no official babble of excitement: various groups of people just arranged themselves by their social allegiance or belonging, and kept to themselves, keeping the noise level down. Sarah and Becker, naturally, found themselves sitting to Jenny and Caroline, who were clearly waiting for them.

"Sarah, are you alright? You're looking kind of pale," Caroline asked quietly.

"Oh, I'm fine, just wondering if you've ever met my uncle," Sarah said quickly. "He also breeds dogs, you see-"

"Oh, let's see," Caroline produced a small phone booklet from a tummy pouch and began to leaf through it. "Ah, there was go – a tall, well-built, bearded chap who breeds such dogs as the sa-luki and the Afghan hound, right?"

"Yes," Sarah nodded. "So have you met him?"

"Only by hearsay – we don't have too many points to interconnect, so... no," Caroline shook her head.

"Shush now, we're about to begin!" Jenny interrupted the two in a stern tone of voice.

Sarah blushed.

* * *

"All right!" the woman whom Sarah and others had met during the encounter with the therocephalians, "let's start the meeting. If colonel Winters would be so kind-"

"I am afraid that colonel Winters is currently incapacitated to be here, so I am speaking for him," another man got up from the Mountie area of the theatre. "I am lieutenant-colonel Culver, for the record."

"Acknowledged, do go on."

"Thank you, professor Bradshaw. Now, I assume that you want to recap the previous events?"

"Briefly, if you wouldn't mind."

"Right. About a month and a half ago from today, we began to receive messages that something or other was or is or has been harassing wild and domestic animals on the Mackenzie Mountain range, so colonel Winters sent Hill and Brook to investigate the going-ons," he paused. "I guess I should also mention the rumours of werewolves and Wendigos that came intermixed with the reports about the harassed animals, but anyways... The point is that Winters has sent Brook and Hill, his best men, on a mission, and they failed to report within 24 hours of their arrival, as they had to. So, a second team was sent to investigate, and discovered their remains as well as the massive trap that had killed at least one of them. The following investigation has failed to satis-factorily establish the perpetrator's... species, and also there were some questions about the bone component of the track, so our labs sent the required material here, and also the OPP and the other local law-enforcement got involved, seeing as it was their territory."

Ancona Muirkirk loudly clearly her throat.

"Right," Culver gave the OPP officer a look, "also, because of several suggestions from the OPP officer Muirkirk, colonel Winters went – in company of the aforementioned OPP officer and the late ROM professor Alexander Ellenton – to England to require the assistance of the so-called Anomaly Research Center because the problem on the Mackenzie Mountains might have been within their area of experience. Currently, apparently, the secondary clues seem to incident that it is so."

"Thank you, lieutenant-colonel," professor Bradshaw nodded solemnly. "Now, unless anyone wants to add to the more recent events-" there were none "-we can now begin to talk about the evidence. To wit, it initially consisted of a gargantuan bone, carved in an unusual shape, and a human corpse, burnt beyond recognition yet bearing a very unusual bite pattern. The investigation by the museum's palaeontologists and biologists, led by me and the late professor Alexander Ellenton failed to establish the species of the biter, yet managed to realize that the bone belonged to a species of indricothere, a long extinct animal, a realization that inspired him to contact the Anomaly Research Center in England for consultations and support, as agreed by the leaders of the RSMP and OPP." There was a pause as professor Bradshaw drank down some water, and then continued:

"Now, a new piece of evidence had become available to us due to the recent events," she continued, "namely a corpse of a humanoid that showed significant differences from the human spe-cies, starting on the genetic level and onwards. To wit," she paused, "his DNA is a mix of human and non-human DNA."

"What?" Culver exclaimed, his sentiment echoed by many other people in the theatre. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, Bradshaw shot Jenny a look, who returned it calmly and blankly.

"Now, in lieu of the experience with the altered bone, we have included fossilized animals into our search and comparison, and have come to a conclusion, that the non-human DNA has the most similarity with a species of a creodont mammal, called hyeanodon. Now," she raised her hand, "I want to ask something of Ms. Jenny Lewis – has her Center ever found evidence that this sort of DNA combination is possible?"

"I regret to admit," Jenny got of her seat, "that while the ARC has encountered several samples of futuristic technology during its' missions, including some indirect evidence of more advanced cloning procedures, it has never encountered anything like what professor Bradshaw has just told us, so the answer is negative." She blushed slightly and sat down.

"Thank you," professor Bradshaw nodded back, "now if anyone else doesn't have anything else to add-"

"I do," officer Muirkirk sat as she got off her seat as well. "I just want to add that the perpetrator has used a gun that was the same one originally issued to the RCMP officer Clark Hill – a fact that had been withheld by the RCMP, and could've led to further complications than this one-"

"I object!" Culver snapped. "This has nothing to do-"

"Enough!" professor Bradshaw snapped. "I agree that the interactions between your branches of law enforcement are less of scientific, and more of criminological nature, but I must admit, lieutenant-colonel, that this withholding could've been problematic, to you including. However, see-ing how we are almost through with matter scientific, I just want to add that ROM will be sending its' representatives alongside the representatives of ARC and OPP back to the Mackenzie Mountains later during this week."

"Now that," lieutenant-colonel Culver snapped, "will have to be discussed by colonel Winters and his superiors."

"Don't worry," professor Bradshaw smiled with a rather frosty smile, "it will be."

_Oh great,_ Sarah silently thought, _more politics. When will we get to the Canadian wilderness already?_

To be continued...


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, not to me._

**Chapter fifteen**

The phone rang, startling James Lester out of his silent reverie; in fact, it had startled many peo-ple of the ARC: with their field agents abroad overseas and across time the Center has grown rather quiet, and that bothered Lester somewhat: the quiet before the storm and all that...

Therefore, it was only natural that the ringing of his phone brought him immediately over there, flanked by Lorraine and several other close aids. "Yes?" he spoke into the receiver, trying not to sound overly eager. "Ms. Lewis, is it you?"

"Why yes, it is. Sorry if you were expecting your wife-"

"Ms. Lewis, you are on the government's time. Can we please get to basics and skip to banter onto a later date?"

"All right, what do you want to know?"

"Have there been any time anomalies?"

"There's an extra big one in one of ROM's garages, leading to the early Triassic. Several animals, native to that time have got through, but we captured them – they're currently being studied already."

"No offense to your hosts, but it would be probably better if you were to send them back from when they came," Lester shook his head. "Cutter probably was right about this – sorry-"

"It's okay," Jenny's tone implied that it was anything but okay, yet she continued onwards as if this gaffe didn't happen. "Now we cannot send the... the therapsids back because the time anom-aly has been kind-of contaminated by river water-"

"The long version, please?"

"The time anomaly is connected to the river in the early Triassic. The water is – was – coming through, and there were some prehistoric crocodile ancestors or something similar coming along, so we had to seal it, and, well, Connor will need to go and look at it when it comes back, as the result appears to be much larger and also different from what we're used to. Anyways, that's only part of the problem."

"What else is there?" Lester asked, suspecting that he will not like the answer at all.

"Somebody has been combining human DNA with DNA of other animals – other mammals at least – and has sent one such hybrid to kill us; fortunately, we managed to delay it long enough for Becker's men to gun him down, so thanks for sending them with us, James."

"You're welcome... say what? Human-animal hybrids?"

"Yes, and the worse thing is that we still don't have any definite proof that Helen's behind it, so maybe it's someone new entirely, how's that for a laugh?"

"You don't hear it because this is government's time," Lester said flatly. "Anyways, thanks for your report, Lewis, and, uh, you haven't created any international incident yet?"

"There's too much internal inter-group fighting for us to do this," James could almost hear Jenny shake her head on the other hand of the phone line. "The Mounties probably have most of justification at least on some level, but the OPP and now ROM also wants in, disregarding that."

Now, James could practically hear Jenny's disapproval of the whole thing. "The thing is, James," the former PR consultant-current team leader continued, "that we're not so sure how the whole thing will turn out, and it's possible that you will have to step-in on the whole international political level."

"That bad, hah?"

"No, but it might get so," Jenny's voice was final. "Good night, James."

"Good night," James repeated after hearing the phone click, and then he remembered the different time zones. "Oh, drat! ...Lorraine, bring me the files regarding the Canadian situation, will you?"

Lorraine hurried off to comply.

* * *

Danny Quinn was in Africa, as simple as that. The time might have been slightly over three million years in the past, and the only people were the ones who were still mostly monkeys (or apes) and thus lived in trees, stark naked, but still he was in Africa, and in a rather modernized one at that!

As he walked through the mountains, he saw no dinosaurs, no terror birds or brontotheres that had come through the time anomalies to the twenty-firth century on his watch – instead, when-ever he used his high ground vantage point to look down, at the savannah, he usually saw jackals or zebras, gazelles or warthogs, marabou storks and secretary birds; in short, the kind of creatures he could see in a zoo or on an ordinary safari – not in prehistoric times.

Admittedly, that wasn't totally bad – Danny never could have afforded a proper safari overseas on either his old or his current salary, and he never had been the kind of person to go to a zoo just for the fun of it...he never had much fun in his life before he became a part of the ARC, avenged his brother's death, and befriended Becker and Sarah, Abby and Connor... and now they were all gone! All gone because he, apparently, was unable to capture Helen properly or to return to the time anomaly in time, or-

The bitter loneliness – the price of his failure hit Danny Quinn right in the face, in the guise of a gust of cold mountain air. He hesitated, and thus saved his life, as he finally saw that he had al-most walked into the biggest and deepest mountain gorge he had ever seen.

"Holy crap!" he exclaimed, a bit too loudly, as next minute his ears were assaulted by the echoing cries of "Crap, crap, crap!" even as the wind that was blowing down through that natural tunnel made his eyes water with its' sting – and that was the final straw.

"Helen!" Danny shouted, eager to drown-out the echo, "come out from wherever and whenever you're hiding! Don't you dare ignore me! I have almost captured you! I'm not a toy for you to play with and discard! What the fuck do you think you are? Some sort of a bleeding goddess, eh? Well then, I'll defy you!" He grabbed his skull (but hopefully not his skull per se) and half-turned to fling it into the gorge – and then a time anomaly opened wide, flinging Abby Maitland and Connor Temple into his arms.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence, and then some profound curses and exclamations of surprise began to resonate through the mountains and the gorge.

* * *

"Connor-? Connor! Snap out of it! It's just a T-Rex... and I can't believe that I just said it," Abby muttered as she shook her part-time boyfriend back into consciousness. "It's too busy eating the other dinosaur, it will never take notice of us, it... well, Connor, remember the giganotosaurus? Now it was scary... well, scarier than this one!"

"Abby, don't make too many loud noises!" Connor finally exclaimed. "It's a T-Rex! Do you want it to notice us?!"

"Now that you mentioned it... no," Abby said a bit sheepishly, "but, well, I thought that I heard something in the bushes..."

Abby's voice trailed away as the T-Rex paused in dismembering the hadrosaur carcass and emitted a series of rather clucking noises, like some sort of a giant hen – and to complete that analogy, a pair of feather-covered things burst out of the bushes and ran towards the original tyrannosaurus as fast as they could.

"What the-?" Abby turned to Connor, who merely nodded in a sage way.

"Tyrannosaurus' young – many of the predatory dinosaurs were born with feathers... well, with partial feathers and generally lost them as they aged."

"The raptors weren't that old when we had run into them," Abby shook her head, "and they were still young."

Connor half-turned gave Abby an evil eye. "You've been thinking of the movie raptors, aren't you? Well, let me tell you that raptors of the movie size have exited... roughly 60 million years ago before our time and have died long before now, and the raptors were met were a more ad-vanced model, deinonychus or dromaeosaurus or something like it... what?"

"Connor, we're sitting and observing a scene never before seen by human eyes, and here you are, talking to me as if it was nothing – where's your explorer's spark, Connor?"

"Present and burning, Abby, I guess I have just been mentally overloaded," Connor admitted, as the two of them stared at the female tyrannosaurus as the latter fed its' much smaller young with pieces of bit-off meat in a manner similar to a female eagle's that Connor and Abby once had seen in the zoo. The fact that the T-Rex young were still covered in feathery down made the comparison even greater.

"That," Abby said after approximately half an hour of observations, "is so cute, even though the proud mother could kill us just by putting her foot down on top of us. Dinosaurs are just birds, aren't they?"

"I rather thought of it the other way around," Connor shrugged, "but, I don't know, should we stick around for long? Guess that because I feel like a rather small creature in a rather big world, I reckon that we should go somewhere more secure, like up a tree-"

"Or to a river?" Abby shrugged, still more interested in the dinosaurs than anything else.

"No, not a good idea," Connor said quickly. "There are crocodiles!"

"What? Crocodiles? What are they eating? Dinosaurs?"

"Exactly!"

"Aren't the dinosaurs kind-of big?"

"And some of the crocodiles – like the deinosuchus were as big as a T-Rex, just not as tall. Anyways, night is coming, so maybe we should leave and find a safe place to sleep..." Connor's voice trailed away as he (and Abby) glanced up and saw something else, something that was definitely not a sunset, come across the sky. "Oh. So that's what time it is – the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction time with us as the guests of honour."

"Connor, get up and run!" Abby snapped, as she jumped onto her feet, ignoring the tyrannosaur family that was ignoring them in turn and just stared at the sky, their heads angling lower and lower.

"What for, Abby?" Connor's voice was more mournful and hopeless than Abby had ever heard him. "This is the mother of all big extinctions – more than 65 percent of all living things will die out in the next twenty-four hours, and those that survive will be smaller than a modern crocodile. Abby, before the damn thing hits, I just want to tell you that I-"

"Connor, is that a time anomaly I see?!" Abby shouted, interrupting Connor before the latter could finish his sentence.

Naturally, Connor whirled around – and there it was, in all of its' chromatically white glory.

The two young adults exchanged looks and ran there as fast as they could, ignoring several small animals that followed them through it...

* * *

"...And now we're here, and here you are," Abby said, somewhat subdued, but still happy – and so was Connor, and so was Danny himself, for that matter.

"Well, you two, we haven't succeeded as we expected to succeed, but we're still alive and now we're together. We'll figure out what to do and put Helen out of business for good, somehow or other!" he said firmly.

Connor and Abby just nodded in agreement, though Abby thought that she had heard an echo of distant laughter, floating on the wind...

_To be continued..._


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless stated others._

**Chapter sixteen**

Mr. Shieldage, the representative of the Canadian government in this venture and aka Lester's Canadian counterpart, was pretty much what the ARC team had expected him to be: roughly Lester's age, albeit a year or two younger, a somewhat less snappy dresser (by British, not Cana-dian standards), with darker hair and eyes; really the only thing different about him was the moustache that he possessed unlike Lester.

"Hello there," he said, grinning wildly, not unlike a salesman of used cars or of personal insurance, "I am the representative of Her Majesty's government of Canada, and my name is Mr. Shieldage. Any questions or criticisms so far?"

Sarah looked askance at the other people in the national airport. Becker and Caroline's faces were immobile, not unlike the faces of the lesser RCMP and OPP officers. Officer Muirkirk and lieutenant-colonel Culver, however, were viewing the Canadian Lester was clear doubt, and Jenny herself was just a toned-down version of those critical gazes – apparently, she found their own version of the government manager-liaison superior to this one.

"Good, I am glad to hear this silence of agreement and approval," Mr. Shieldage said, smiling in that not-very-pleasing manner once more. "Then I guess we are off to our flights, for there are at least two plane fights to be taken to our destination...and I have to read a lot of material on our way there, so can I please not be bothered without good reason, okay?"

Still more silence, only the wind rustled through the garbage in the semi-opened air field – the garbage-related strike did not appear to have ended, and neither did the relatively foul weather, for the sky was still overcast, matching the general mood of the majority of people who were gathered there.

"Good, lock and load, everyone!"

With such a leader, we're so doomed, Sarah mused to herself.

* * *

High, high above the airfield, much closer to the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, something twinkled, unseen by eye and practically undetectable by the local radars – a smallish, spherical satellite, save for several protruding antennas, which intercepted radio (and TV) waves and acquired various information, including classified one. Sarah and the others didn't know it, but they were being watched.

* * *

The next morning Abby awoke due to some deep, guttural laughter of a definitely masculine kind – and to her even greater surprise, the laugh belonged not to a human, as she initially thought, but to a rather misshaped animal, coloured a bit like an inversed zebra, but with a vaguely horse-like head and a body plan similar to a giraffe, minus the elongated neck.

"It's an ancylotherium," Connor said helpfully, as he and Danny were busily looking through Abby's back pack for some energy bars or similar food stuffs. "It's harmless."

"You sure?" Abby said with some obvious scepticism. True, it didn't look very dangerous, but was also easily two meters tall, and Abby preferred to err on side of caution whenever dealing with unknown or strange creatures. "I mean, we don't know-"

"Actually, I am," Connor said firmly. "The ancylotherium is a member of the chalicothere family, a cousin to the zebra, the horse and the rhino, but fed on bushes and leaves rather than grass, and so they died out long before we evolved into our modern selves – period."

"Fine," Abby conceded the point, "but since there's nothing else for us to do, should we get a move on?"

"Fine, where to?" Danny said, as he looked at the still-browsing ancylotherium. "I don't really have any particular idea where to go to, unless it's back – I also really don't want to go back into the highlands without a good reason."

"So let's go along them, along the Great Rift," Connor said from his position next to the remains of the last night's campfire. "Hopefully, we'll find something there somewhere, eh, Abby?"

"Oh, fine," Abby said in exasperation, "you've guys outvoted me-" she took a step forwards and accidentally stepped in a 'present' of the ancylotherium with a squelching sound.

"And on the other hand, let's stop at the river first," Connor said without missing a beat. "Anyone objects? Anyone holds out? Good – mission's carried, Abby – ladies first."

Abby turned out and went for the kill.

* * *

"Hey, Sarah, how are you?"

"Becker – didn't you ask me this question already?"

"This was yesterday, and today...you're not looking that much better, honestly."

"Sorry," Sarah backed down, as usual, "it's just that I had the strangest dream last night – two human shadows sat upside down on a wall and argued over something while looming onto my laptop."

Becker blinked. "You want to repeat it?"

"I just had a dream that didn't make any sense last night," Sarah said crossly, "so I am feeling completely fine, if that's what you're asking."

Becker blinked once more. "It's not your time of the month, is it?" he suggested, only partially in jest.

Sarah just glared in reply, and the interlocution would have deteriorated right then and there, if Caroline didn't come over and spread her legs over a couple of empty seats. "It had started bad and it's going to get worse, hah?" she said conversationally.

Sarah blinked in confusion. Yesterday the other woman was non-talkative and morose, and now she seemed to be much more like her usual self; still, Sarah was grateful for a shift in the uncomfortable conversation, and nodded in reply:  
"Something like that – is Jenny being grilled by Mr. Salesman?"

"You mean Shieldage? No. The man is like an improved version of Oliver Leek, and that's not a good thing at all!"

Sarah and Becker exchanged looks. "Who's Leek?" Becker finally asked, curious.

Caroline raised an eyebrow. "Didn't Lester or Jenny ever tell you? Leek was a former assistant of Lester's who allied himself with Helen Cutter and tried to take over England using various animals from future and past."

"I think Lester or Lorraine had mentioned that name in passing few times," Becker admitted, "but can we have a full version?"

"As far as I am concerned, this is a full version," Caroline said, getting cross. "Leek was Lester's assistant, embezzled funds from the ARC, used them to hire several mercenaries...including me-"

"Wait. You're a mercenary?"

"No, I just breed dogs, but I know several people who are."

"Anyone we know?" Becker said, trying to joke, but Caroline's answer was anything but:

"Yes, Phil – I believe Connor and Abby are calling him The Cleaner."

* * *

"Children, please, start speaking to each other," Danny said wearily, as Connor and Abby walked on the opposite sides of him, casting sullen glances. "I'm sick of playing monkey-in-the-middle to a pair of young adults!"

Still nothing, only Abby wrinkling her nose from the smell of her dung-covered boot. Danny sighed and changed topics abruptly.

"Well, we're at the local watering hole – now what?"

"Now Abby washed her boot while we keep a look-out for crocodiles," Connor said flatly, "as well as for any other dangerous animals."

"Does this elephant... thing counts as dangerous?" Danny nodded towards the aforementioned animal.

"It's a deinotherium," Connor abruptly stopped, causing Danny and eventually Abby to stop as well. I think that we should give it a wide berth – just in case."

"Why is that-" Abby began on a matter of principle, but then the deinotherium smelled her boot and did the only thing its' small mind thought was appropriate – it charged.

* * *

"You worked with the clone-guy?" Becker said incredulously.

"No, I knew the original of those clones you speak of," Caroline said calmly, "and he wasn't the worst of men, even if he wasn't the best. However, I believe that he wasn't the man you fought, and I'm sticking to it."

"And Lester knew it?"

"Lester knew everything – and so does Jenny."

"So do I what?" Jenny Lewis had left her front seat next to the ROM representatives and sat closer to her team. "Becker, Lazrev is asking if you're in for a game of cards- what?"

"Caroline's been telling us about Oliver Leek, Helen and the clones," Becker said flatly. "Why wasn't I notified of it?"

"You'll have to ask Lester about it, " Jenny said slowly, "but this isn't what really bothering you, is it?"

"No, it's not," Becker said coldly. "You knew it and you kept quiet from us – that's not right."

"Well, maybe I thought that Lester had informed you before hand," Jenny said sounding coolly, rather than defensive. "I mean, do you have to tell your friends everything?"

There was a pause terminated with Becker's flat "yes" and a noted lack of support from Sarah, who looked guiltily at Becker, yet kept quiet.

"How about," Caroline spoke up suddenly, noticing the increasing tenseness in Becker's poise, "If I made some sort of an apology for keeping this sort of thing under wraps instead, eh?"

Becker whipped his head around and stared Caroline right in the eyes – neither flinched. "It's not from you I want an apology in this instance," he said flatly.

Jenny groaned. "Becker, I am sorry, but I have thought that Becker has told you about that situation already."

Becker turned back and told Jenny what – or who – he thought James Lester was, causing Jenny to groan.

"I guess that instead of talking about Mr. Sha-somthing's info-pimping we're going to clear bridges between ourselves," Jenny sighed. "So, where we should begin?"

"At the beginning," Becker said slowly, "preferably before either I, or Sarah, or Danny had come to the ARC..."

As Jenny and Becker began to talk, Sarah just sighed and looked at Caroline, who stared dispassionately back her – this was shaping-up to be a really long flight...

* * *

And meanwhile, in the savannah of the Pliocene Africa, Danny Quinn shivered despite the warm air for no reason at all.

_To be continued_


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless stated others._

**Chapter seventeen**

High, high up in the sky, the smallish spherical satellite twinkled in the rays of the distant sun, its' antennas constantly shifting their position on the satellite, constantly keeping track of various communications underneath, almost like an angler with several fishing rods, all aiming to catch a single fish, with all antennae eventually aiming in a single direction, like strands of a single net... and in the center of the net was a single flight from Toronto to Calgary – a flight that would later head north, into a very specific area of the Canadian territories...

Suddenly, one of the antennae – one that kept a bit out of sync with the others, one that remained a bit slower than the other antennae and was actually inactive - caught up with the rest of its mechanical brethren with a vengeance, not trapping any sort of air waves, but emitting a radio wave of its own – and far below the landing plane, a time anomaly suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

* * *

"You have stayed alongside your boss for a long time," Ancona Muirkirk said with a slight smile to Becker, but because her nose still hadn't fully recovered, the result was rather smudged. "Team loyalty and all that, hah?"

"No," Becker glared across his own cards, "this wasn't anything like she intended – our team's briefing about Lazrev's boss grew into something more like a little session... it's not important." He turned to Lazrev. "So are you excited about going abroad for a change?"

"No," the other man shook his head. "I am a city man and I like my warmth... and now I am go-ing into the Northern wilderness, because I was deemed competent enough – along with the members of my shift – to pull it off. And to think that if arrived just fifteen minutes later, this whole thing would've been avoided instead by me and mine altogether."

Now everyone looked at lieutenant-colonel Culver to see how the latter would respond, but the RCMP man just grunted and indicated that he passes his turn at cards this time. "So, I am un-happy with my boss," Lazrev continued, unabashed, "Becker is having problems with him, and Dudley Do-right here has boss in a hospital," he paused. "So officer, how are your superiors?"

"If I all works out in the end, I'm getting a promotion," Muirkirk said calmly. "That's, of course, a very big if, but I am keeping on hoping, yes indeed!"

"Well, that's the spirit!" Becker said calmly, his mood lifting somewhat, albeit with an effort – he remembered his first days on the job, but instead of commenting about them, he said: "You realize that if we pull it off, you'll probably become something of local consultants regarding such sort of emergencies?"

Lazrev and Muirkirk exchanged looks and even Culver looked interested. "You're serious?" Lazrev finally asked.

"Well, I and my men are Government Issue, sure enough, but the field teams – like the one led by Ms. Lewis, they're a little les orthodox by the government standards."

"Ah, that's different then," Muirkirk said smugly. "Law enforcement may not be exactly the military, but we're not civilians exactly, so there's no problem of me and mine – Lazrev and his boss, though..."

Becker wanted to point out that he and his men were part of the official military yet the ARC was something more a civilian law enforcement agency, but somehow Muirkirk's attitude just rubbed him wrong – so wrong that he kept quiet instead.  
However, he also noticed the thoughtful look of the RCMP's lieutenant-colonel and realized that the other man had also realized it. However, since Culver kept quiet, so did Becker...

* * *

"That's can become the most bizarre end for an ex-policeman to ever go," Becker muttered, as he and his friends sat on top of a youngish baobab tree and observed the deinotherium harassing the tree down below. "I mean, this isn't a predator, we were staying far away from it, so what's that elephant-thing's problem?"

"If it's anything like the modern elephants, then it's in musth," Abby said slowly. "That is to say, he's got a testosterone overload, so it charges at anything it doesn't like, unless it's a sexually available female of its' species."

Danny just stared, and so did Connor, but unlike Danny, he didn't do so quietly. "Abby," the younger man spoke instead, emotion clearly colouring his voice. "You're so smart, like-"

"Oh, don't make me blush," but Abby did just that all the same. Seeing it, Danny felt like he was slowly moving from a horror movie to a surreal one – trapped on a tree by a horny elephant-thing with a pair of almost-newlyweds at a very similar state of horniness was not the way he intended to go, 3 million in the Earth's past or not! And so, he climbed down, grabbed the giant beast by its' ear, and shouted:

"Get lost already, you ugly freak!"

And the deinotherium reacted in an almost expected way: it swung its' misshapen (by Danny's standards for the elephants, at any rate) head at Danny... who was quickly climbing back up the baobab, and so the animal missed him by a wide margin, instead slamming straight into the tree trunk. The massive shudder caused Danny to lose his grip, and he fell – straight on top of the prehistoric beast.

Needless to say, the deinotherium didn't like it one bit, if Danny hadn't been able to grab one of its' ears, he would've fell and got trampled to death – and instead he got to hanging around the creature's smallish ear, causing distress to both of them.

As Abby just glared in horror at Danny's unrehearsed rodeo, Connor decided to help: he climbed lower, and tried to grab Danny, as the latter's grip on the animal's ear began to slip. In fact, he managed to actually grab Danny, but had misjudged the animal's momentum: instead of pulling Danny onto the tree, Connor got pulled off the tree instead, still holding onto Danny and it's needless to say that the extra weight caused Danny to tear through the animal's ear, making him and Connor fall down to the ground, completely at mercy of berserk giant.

However, upon seeing the two of them being moments away getting trampled, Abby went sort of berserk herself: screaming some sort of nonsensical gibberish as loud as she could, she jumped off the tree onto the animal, i.e. launching some sort of a double kick attack. Sadly, this act of desperation did nothing as the deinotherium just flung Abby away by shaking its head...and on the backswing, as its' head and short neck were still stuck in an odd position, they hit the tree's trunk – and hit hard.

Connor and Danny just stared and listened in horrified fascination at the loud crack that hap-pened after the impact, and at the even louder thump that took place as the giant animal fell sideways. And as they slowly got onto their feet, they heard Abby shout:

"Somebody help me get out of these acacia shrubs before I end with thorns up my arse!!"

* * *

The weather was turning nastier by the moment, with strong winds and heavy rains – in fact, too heavy for the Canadian prairies this late in summer, when the seasonal drought was supposed to set-in. The pilots, however, were too busy keeping plane in control, and so they never thought about this weather peculiarity at all – but there was a reason for it: it hid the chromatically white glow of a time anomaly from human eyes...but it so happened that there was a pair of different eyes on the plane staring from one of the illuminators and it so that glow despite all the weather in the way.

* * *

"DOWN, BOY, DOWN! IT'S A FUCKING DINOSAUR!! DOWN!!!" the cry, the yowl, the howl charged through the airplane, with such a commanding force that everybody pretty much dropped down to the floor, or at least hankered down in their seats, even if just for a moment – but a crucial one.

The next moment, the time anomaly burst from its' weather-condition cover in a burst of a chromatically white light, straight before the plane, causing the pilots to jerk several levers and the steering wheel sideways, but it was pointless, as the front end of the plane entered the time anomaly, and then the whole plane jerked sideways, falling apart in two uneven bits, each one on the other end of the time anomaly – and with such a hole, and at such a crucial place, it had no chance of recovery: instead it spun downwards out of control until it finally slammed into the covering of the air field.

And then, there was nothing but the sudden crackling of the flame.

_To be continued..._


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: Unless the characters are OC, they belong to Impossible Pictures.  
Note: Contains some spoilers for the official series._

**Chapter eighteen**

The return back to the copse with the ancylotherium was even less pleasant than the initial departure – in fact, one could've said that Danny, Connor and Abby were fully retreating back there simply to avoid any more of the mega-fauna of the Pliocene Africa – well, the more dangerous members anyways, 'cause the ancylotherium could be considered a member of the mega-fauna as well...

At any rate, the trio was walking slowly: not only Connor's ankle was still sore after the Cretaceous encounters, but also Abby's butt and thighs were equally sore due to various acacia thorns that have stung and gouged a lot of flesh, which now bled, and attracted flies... so Abby had to tie her jacket over the wounded area like a very impromptu bandage, and now was beginning to get sunburn on her neck and shoulders instead.

"This is turning out to be some vacation," she said crossly, simply because she was too cranky to keep quiet. "Guys, maybe we should go back into the rift's highlands – that's where the time anomalies were, after all."

"Yes, but they're leading back to the Cretaceous, either to the time when the asteroid hit, or some time before this," Connor shook his head. "We'd be moving much further away from our time if we were to go through one of them."

"And if we were to stay and not to go, what then? Stay here and establish some sort of an out-of-time commune?" Abby pressed on. "Guys, I understand all that, but... we seem to be pressed into a corner where it's damned if we do, damned if we don't sort of a choice."

"She has a point," Connor nodded, and then shifted back to look forwards through their path – what if there was a lion or a similar creature in the way. "Of course, conversely, there's... that."

The trio of reluctant time-travellers just stared at a trio of skulls who have formed a small pyramid on a large boulder in the front of them. The topmost skull was the one that Danny had left in the rift's highlands, with the traces and marks of predator's teeth on its' bony surface. But the ones on the bottom were much different, largely covered by dark-coloured stony protrusions, save for some patches on their jaw- and cheekbones, where the original shape of bones was more obvious, but even that wasn't the worst thing – the fact that those patches were a mirror reflection of each other, was.  
For a few moments, the trio of people just stared at the trio of skulls, and then Danny exclaimed with more venom than he had ever used:

"Can you guess whose work is this?"

* * *

For several moments, the downed and seriously damaged plane just laid there, with flames beginning to lick the various parts of its' body, fuselage and wings – and then it exploded into activity, as people in various uniforms just burst from out of there, pulling out emergency exits and even various rafts to help cushion their fall. Closer to the to the tail end, one of the emergency doors was just busted wide open, and several people and dogs burst out, throwing several boxes of ammunition and other equipment away from the airplane, hoping that the sealed containers will take most of the brunt of the impact, even if they had done so already.

However, the burning plane was intent on making its own schedule – with a groan, one of the plane's wings just fell off, burning merrily and emitting a strong stench of burning metal, plastic and fuel; in fact, that stench was so strong, that the people quickly abandoned salvaging anything else from the airplane, and instead raced away from the site.

And then, the airplane... imploded, there was no better way of phrasing it, really: one moment it just stood there, burning, and the next moment it collapsed, transforming into a colossal fireball that burst into an incendiary cloud, which briefly turned in a cloud of scalding steam as it inter-mixed with the copious amounts of rainwater and vanished.

"Well, that was anti-climatic," someone huffed, unidentifiable in all the soot and smoke and rainwater.

"Oh yeah?" replied another voice, this was sort of familiar, but Becker's hearing hadn't recovered yet from the blast, so he couldn't be sure. "Then how about the creatures in the murk behind us? How's that for an anti-climax?!"

* * *

For several heartbeats the trio just stood under the increasing heat of Africa's Pliocene sun, and then Connor exhaled, loudly. "She's just playing games with us, nothing more, you guys," he said very loudly throughout the silent plains. "If we just ignore her, she'll just go away."

"And that's the catch, Connor," Danny said bitterly. "I tried this already, after she handed me the topmost skull and if I have kept going at it, I'd still by wandering the highlands alone. Helen may be crazy, but honestly, if I had the choice to re-do it, I'd still play along and have you two with me, rather than the alternative-" he pointed to the other skulls, encrusted with rock and looking much older than his.

The evidence spoke for itself, yet Abby spoke anyways:

"Connor, what choice do we have? I guess we're still damned either way, whether we play along or not, and apparently she did save our lives back in the Mesozoic or whenever."

"I know, it's just that it's wrong," Connor said bitterly. "That, that-"

"Ahem, it's rude to speak as if I am not here," spoke another female voice.

In a minute, the other three whirled around, seeing the speaker sitting underneath a tall acacia shrub – they could've sworn that there was no one just moments ago.

* * *

Becker stared, he couldn't help it – the animals that were staring back at them were just preposterous looking: almost as tall as humans and built as solid as wild boars, they were covered in completely bare dark greenish-grey hide, sprouting powerful beaks and impressive tusks – all in all, potentially powerful adversaries, especially if they were all to charge as one.

And yet, they also lacked a very crucial piece, that would be needed to achieve just that: instead of charging or attacking in a similar way, they had formed a circle of the aforementioned beaks and tusks, and just stood there, trembling in the rain, clearly letting the humans take the initiative on the attack, and when it came...

From one direction – further off to Becker's left than he had expected – came a burst of gunfire, aimed purposefully high over the creatures' heads and backs. Consequently, the animals – who frankly didn't like the smartest animals that had ever existed – immediately broke their position and fled away from the sounds... a direction which led them into one of the closer hangars of the airfield. Several moments later the sounds of the doors sliding shut had reached Becker's ears as well.

And now, that sound broke the remaining silence over the airfield, as various people began to interact with each other, tallying up the dead, the wounded and the unscathed, and moreover, Becker could now hear sirens of the arriving emergency vehicles coming on ever loudly in the distance.

"Oh goody," he told no one in particular, "the cavalry's here."

And then he fainted.

* * *

"Helen," Danny said curtly. "What do you want?"

"I want nothing," Helen said calmly, "I was just waiting to see if you all had your fill of running around the savannah and are ready to get back to work."

"You mean stopping you?" Connor growled.

"You tried and you died... but fortunately, you've succeeded in doing that all the same," Helen smiled slightly.

"No, you're still here."

"Am I? Perhaps. Or perhaps you've managed to stop a crazy clone of me, or perhaps I am a crazy clone who wants you to get back home, and you managed to kill off the real deal – who knows? Well, me, certainly, but I'm not telling."

"Helen-" Danny began, but the latter just shook her head, a very odd look in her eyes.

"But that is not the point – the point is that I'd rather have you there than here," she said calmly.

"We will stop you, nonetheless, whatever is it that you're planning," Connor snapped, clearly uninterested in Helen's gloating, "so cut to the chase."

"Connor Temple, you're so much a puppy who'll drown for the sake of a moon in the well, that it's sad, really," Helen snapped back, "so here's thing – as you remember, several megaopterans have passed through a time anomaly on your way to me."

"What of them?" Danny asked suspiciously.

"Before your friends managed to kill them off, they've bred, and very soon their matured young will swarm," Helen replied, "creating an even bigger problem than the original adults. Unfortu-nately, your friends are right now out of country on a different ARC business, and simply won't be able to solve the problem before they're finished out there."

"How do we know that you're not lying?" Connor asked flatly.

"Why should I lie? You're neither interesting nor important – not right now – to be lied to," Helen shrugged. "The truth is that you're the best way to solve the megaopteran problem, and so I am implementing you to do just that."

"And afterwards? You're still going to destroy humanity?"

"No, not for a while – I may have found a different way to achieve my dream," Helen smiled, and pulled out a time anomaly generator. "Here you go, one pre-downloaded way back, enjoy!"

"And you, where you're going to-" Danny trailed off. He had taken his eyes off of Helen just for a minute, and in that moment, she just vanished without a trace.

"Just what is she to be able to pull such stunts?!"

* * *

"Uh, this was the worst landing I have ever experienced!" captain Becker was in a truly foul mood. "And for comparison, I have seen action overseas!"

"We believe you," Caroline shrugged from her observation post in a comfortable looking arm-chair, as she looked at him across the room. "Still, you were able to keep on your feet until the dicynodonts got safely rounded up into the hangar."

"The what?"

"Dicynodonts, according to ROM's representative. Right now they're still in there, while the scientific – and political – communities of Toronto and Calgary figure out how to spread them, as well as the privilege and responsibilities between their cities. Luckily, they're herbivores – from the same time period as the therapsids that are currently staying over at ROM – so there's no rush or any expected danger for human lives."

"Herbivores," Becker repeated slowly, "I see."

"See what?"

"I think we have a problem," Becker said wearily. "Where are Sarah and Jenny? We need to talk."

There was a knock on the door. "Belay that," Caroline said softly, as she got off the armchair, pulling out her shotgun from behind it. "We may have a more immediate one instead... Who is it?" she called out louder in the direction of the door.

"It's lieutenant-colonel Culver – and I want to talk."

_To be continued..._


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless they're OC.  
Note: There was a time anomaly in the ARC's kitchen in the episode 1x04, when several dodos had come from it._

**Chapter nineteen**

For several moments, Caroline and Becker just stared at each other, and the Caroline just opened the door, even as Becker scrambled off the bed, looking rather embarrassed. "Ah, lieutenant-colonel, do come in," Caroline said calmly. "Is officer Muirkirk or someone else with you?"

"No," the RCMP officer shook his head, "I feel that this is a private discussion instead. Can I sit down?"

"Certainly," Jenny and Sarah appeared from the adjoining bathroom, "do come in, officer. Are you alone?"

"Yes," Culver repeated, promptly walked to a nearest armchair, and sat down, "I am." He paused and looked around. "Look, unlike old man Winters, I'm not here to start a fight, I just want some answers."

"And we'll give them to you, honest," Jenny replied calmly, sitting down herself. "Of course, we do not know all of them, contrary to what you may think."

"Fair enough," Culver didn't appear like he expected anything more from the leaders of the ARC's team, "but let's begin all the same. Colonel Winters told me that on the ride to the ROM the two of you mentioned some person who may be behind all of this commotion. Care to elaborate?"

"Well, we were talking about Helen Cutter, one of the people outside of the ARC who're aware of the whole time anomaly situation," Jenny said slowly. "Helen, in particular, is one with the most experience in these matters, she probably knows as much as our senior members, and maybe even a bit more. However, we're also reasonably sure by now that she's not behind this."

"Why is that?"

"First of all, the initial trap. Carving something out of an animal bone, even a prehistoric one, seems a bit too commando for her: when she uses technology, it's of a futuristic kind, not something like that. Secondly, it's the time anomalies – while there is a way to create them via remote control, those devices work only close range, so if she was around to push them into our path – again, something that she didn't seem to be doing whenever she confronts us – we would've no-ticed it back in Toronto, if not here. And finally, the dicynodonts. Clearly, they were sent here to finish us off if we were to survive the plane crash, but they're herbivores, and not particularly smart or fierce ones at that. Helen would never have made this mistake, she has been through a lot of time anomalies, and generally knows her animals," she paused. "In short, they're all little details, but to us they add to someone new, someone who we never met."

"I see," Culver nodded slowly. "Now, from what I've learned the animals that were encountered at the Museum were also from the Triassic time period. Does this mean that the person or persons responsible for all this have access only to the Triassic period?"

"It's a tricky one," Sarah spoke up before Jenny could. "Yes, they were also from the Triassic, but several dozen million years earlier than the dicynodonts at this airport; plus, the assassin from the Museum was made – or altered – by some sort of futuristic technology as well, so we feel like saying that no, they probably have two or more time periods that they can access at will."

"Now what was the story about the assassin's gun?" Caroline spoke up sharply, startling the Mountie who seemed to be thinking over the other two women's reply. "I believe that there were two Mountie agents, initially, so this means that there could be two lost handguns of your issue. Was it so or not?"

"Yes, and neither firearm was accounted for, but we... were distracted," Culver said with some bitterness, though it wasn't anywhere near the level of his superior officer. "Still, you have a point, and we have sent information about Clark's gun turning up in the most unconvincing place – if our ambush-loving friend will try to use Grant's gun as well, he, she or they will be for a nasty surprise."

"Have you been in contact with them lately?" Jenny spoke up before Becker could. "As you pointed out yourself, our opponent or opponents loves ambushes, especially the ones set at our destination. What if he would set one at your camp?"

"Impossible! They're dealing with a well-fortified RCMP camp, whose members are well-prepared for what is to come!"

"You mean like the way we were prepared at ROM or here in Calgary?" Becker said quietly, and watched sadly as the lieutenant-colonel's eyes widened in realization. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I suggest that you use the Internet, 'cause it's more secure."

"Yes, of course, thank you," the Mountie said as he all but rushed out of their hotel suite.

Caroline and the others looked at his hasty departure, and then at each other. "Have you contacted Lester and told him that we're probably doomed?" Caroline finally spoke.

"It probably won't have to be that bad," Jenny sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Caroline, "but yes, yes, I and Sarah have e-mailed Lester and told him that the thing has the potential to go that way," she admitted suddenly. "So, eh, any more comments?"

"If we're going to go down with a fight, let's give the bastards a fight that they won't forget for a long time?" Caroline said, smiling slightly, and the smile was vicious.

"I'll drink to that," Becker nodded. "Sarah, open the bar."

...The ARC's reserve field team had gotten rather drunk that night (purely as a stress-relief though).

* * *

Far above the Calgary airspace the smallish spherical satellite twinkled brightly, its' antennae shifting from a receiving to a sending position, now sending the information from Calgary to a small computer located deep in the Mackenzie mountains, into a cave, where several bipedal yet misshapen (from a human point of view) figures sat around it, reading the info and observing the visuals.

"The second plan had failed most spectacularly, even if by a narrow margin," one of the figures spoke with a pronouncedly barking accent. "The lack of more precise information is unacceptable."

"We must try to play to our strengths and hide our weaknesses – this should be easy, our enemies must not be aware of either!" barked another.

"They have not used phone conversation in a while now – overconfidence may be undoing of this plan."

"One has – and he has priority!" barked a fourth member of the team, still monitoring the com-puter. "The RCMP camp has been forewarned, the fools think – the attack is tonight!"

Several – more than half a dozen, more than a dozen, more than twenty - identical muzzle-shaped faces looked upwards to the cave's ceiling, several pairs of identical feral-green eyes stared upwards, several equally hybrid throats emitted the same gravelly roars and howls:

Tonight they were going to kill!

* * *

James Lester stared silently at the unexpected e-mail from Jenny Lewis: this was shaping up to be a dire business. James Lester was no stranger to death and had lost valuable underlings during his tenure as the head of the ARC, but this was a whole new level, an international one.

Then there was Jenny's supposition that Helen Cutter wasn't behind all of these attacks at all, which was troublesome albeit on a lesser level; in fact, one could say that he was almost relieved that it wasn't their semi-official arch-nemesis, bent on a new tactic. Still, their new opponent – or opponents, Jenny was right, it could happen – was apparently just as formidable as Helen Cutter, and working on an even grander scale, geographically speaking.

However, this left him – what was he to do? The way that the new developments were coming up, his back-up team was in Canada were all the action was, and he was stuck here, and Danny Quinn and the other two were still-

The time anomaly alarm sounded loudly through the building, startling Lester. "What, where it is-" he began and froze, as did many of the other people, as they saw Danny Quinn, flanked by Connor Temple and Abby Maitland emerge from the ARC's kitchen, looking as startled as Lester was.

When finally Danny spoke, it wasn't very re-assuring either:

"We're going to kill Helen for this, the next time."

_To be continued..._


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless they're OC._

**Chapter twenty**

The Canadian wilderness under a full moon night could appear very beautiful under the right circumstances: the moon was shining like a well-polished plate of silver, there were barely some wisps of clouds in the sky, and the various trees gleamed with a silvery-green sheen in the moonlight. All in all, a beautiful picture, but in reality, there were several important differences from the picturesque image that it appeared to be.

For one thing, there were the various gnats and mosquitoes, buzzing around anything (or anyone) who was warm and breathing and warm-blooded, including both humans and their dogs. Al-though not particularly dangerous, those swarms had bites that itched and sometimes sickened, and often distracted them from other, greater threats.

Secondly, there was the cold – not exactly the biting cold of the Canadian winter or even late autumn, but still a nasty chill that tended to crawl up the protective clothing and such all the warmth out of a human body, leaving it open to various diseases and sicknesses, including the ones transmitted by mosquitoes...

Finally, there was the darkness itself – not even electric lights, let alone the light of a bonfire, could fully disperse the darkness between the conifer boughs and deciduous branches, and the moonlight merely created a confusing mix of twilight and shadow, further obscuring the outlines and appearances of various creatures and objects further on away from the camp.

And in that twilit darkness, something hid. Several some things, in fact, they were plentiful in numbers, and they moved in a military precision of the highest degree. Actually, it was almost uncanny how several dozen animal, unshod feet walked step-by-step-in-step with a delicate precision, how their odd, mismatched bodies had one and the same stance, the same stature, even the feral look etched onto their dog-like, or rather hyena-like, faces was identical – too identical to belong to separate individuals.

For the first time in the twenty-first century's warfare, a company of clones was marching to war – and this time, the ordinary humans were going to get caught flat-footed.

* * *

"So, you're telling me that as soon as you came through the time anomaly at the race track, Helen Cutter began to mess with you."

"No, that happened later, once I caught-up with her in ancient Africa, at least for a while," Danny said wearily. "Then, yes, it was all about skulls and the states of life and death, and I was stuck in the highlands above the Great Rift all alone," he shuddered. "But to answer your question – yes, we weren't even been truly able to sneak upon on her in the future without getting tazered – well, I got tazered, Abby and Connor just sort-of humiliated."

"It's true," Abby simply nodded, "that woman is uncanny – I honestly begin to think that we need to check her for horns and cloven hooves if we ever capture her!"

"Oh, come on," Lester felt that something light-hearted was required to lift the spirits of his team, "I'm sure that she's not all-powerful or all-knowing-"

It was at that moment that Lester's computer pinged with the arrival of another e-mail. Thinking that it was yet another e-mail from Jenny, Lester and the others hurriedly ran up to the computer to read it-

It wasn't from Jenny Lewis at all, but from the topic of their recent discussion, providing a de-tailed address of their destination, and an ever-so-helpful reminder/explanation of what they'll be up against, wrapped-up with an avatar of the e-mail's author that consisted of her smiling face.

"You were saying?" Connor said bitterly. "She's got to have horns and hooves, because other-wise I'm sprouting some myself just to frustrate her – she's not getting the best of me!"

"Yes, well, we'll talk about that later," Lester said, beginning to grow uncomfortable about the amount of influence that Helen was beginning to wield over his main field team's minds, "for now we'll have to check that funeral home and cemetery, because if she's telling the truth, it's horrible."

"Yeah, she never goes for champ change anymore," Danny said sourly. "Well, we're off-"

"Not alone, we'll need every manjack we have, I included," Lester said flatly. "Quinn, you and yours wait for us in the garage – this is going to be our biggest job yet, not counting the job that Jenny with others is doing in Canada."

"Oh? What are they doing?" Danny said, eager for news about their friends. "And wait, did you say in Canada?"

"Yes, and so far they withheld from launching a dinosaur rodeo like they did in Heathrow before they left."

"They what?!"

* * *

The Canadian night was twilit and silent, and the Mounties in the camp were busy doing their nightly activities, which included keeping sentry watch – needless to say it was one of the sen-tries that got dropped when one of the upcoming intruders raised one of its arms, and fired the handgun that the arm possessed. As a result, the sentry dropped like a stone, bleeding from his mouth and the hole in the chest.

For the next few moments the rest of the Mounties just could not believe that one of their number has been shot. The shooter used this momentary hesitation to begin fire off more rounds, each one hitting one victim after another in the chest or head or stomach... until the survivors charged forwards, brandishing their own weapons, some issued, some grabbed in the spur of the moment.

That was what the rest of the attackers were waiting for: with guttural, gravelly growls, they burst from the cover of the night forest, some perpendicular to the ground, and others parallel, their eyes glowing and teeth glinting in the moonlight. Within moments they were upon the startled humans, and soon there was nothing going on under the light of moon and stars but some more growls, equally guttural laughter, and the sound of fangs, crunching bone...

* * *

...and meanwhile, halfway across the world, the ARC vehicles had stopped before a massive, gloomy building, one of London's several mortuary homes and cemeteries.

"Well," James Lester said slowly, "we're here."

It was at that moment that a megaopteran burst from behind a tombstone, its' wings spread wide and jaws clacking hungrily, only to be shot down by a lucky blast.

"Yeah," Danny Quinn chuckled grimly, as several more futuristic insects rose from their cover, "this is definitely the place for us to be."

_To be continued..._


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless they're original.  
Note: This chapter contains some spoilers from the canon series._

**Chapter twenty-one**  
The morning sun had penetrated at long last the window shutters, finally landing on the face of Sarah Page. "Oh," she groaned, feeling slightly ill, "this is the last time I let myself party with you people – we just had one, maybe two bottles of-"

"As Apollo has said, you must have moderation in all – even in moderation, but that is another story," Jenny said firmly, as she thrust a small cup of hard black coffee under Sarah's nose. "Here you go, a medicine for just such an emergency."

With her mind still blurry and her alertness levels really low, Sarah mechanically swallowed al-most the whole contents of the cup. The next moment, her eyes bulged from their sockets, and she almost spat the entire contents back into the cup or onto her blanket – only Jenny's active participation prevented her from doing that, so she had to re-swallow the coffee after all.

"I don't know who taught you that trick-"

"It was Lester-"

"Then James Lester is a-"

"Ah, you're awake – very good," Becker emerged from the bathroom with a towel thrown around his shoulder like a Roman patrician. "Caroline, Sarah's awake!"

"I can see that," the latter responded from an armchair that she apparently favoured, "and I am really glad to see it – now we can move on, I guess?"

"Yes, I suppose so too," Jenny nodded and looked down at Sarah with a bit of sternness in her eyes. "Are you ready to get out of bed?"

Blushing weakly, Sarah complied.

* * *

The megaopterans, apparently, could testify that not all bad things came in big packages - some-times they came in smaller swarms... well, swarms composed of smaller-sized individual speci-mens, that is. Otherwise, however, the futuristic insects were pretty much the same ones that Danny and others had already met in their trips to the future – multicoloured insects with spiky legs and jaws, resembling – at the same time – beetles, crickets, praying mantises and walking sticks.

"I know, I know," Connor suddenly murmured to Abby with enthusiasm, "they remind me of wetas!"

"Of what?"

"Wetas! Giant flightless crickets from New Zealand!"

"Those animals aren't crickets, nor are they flightless," Abby couldn't help but point out.

"It's just details, really," Connor said dismissively. "These insects are-"

"Duck!"

...Unfortunately, Connor wasn't unable to react in time, and so a splattering of insect innards, coloured in bilious yellow, hit him in the side of the head: Connor Temple just yelped and finally hankered down, to Abby's relief.

* * *

The breakfast, to Sarah's hidden disgust, proved to be more coffee (or tea), coupled with toasts with jam, or morning cereal, or sausages, or fried eggs – the standard set in many hotels and similar establishments; however, after the early morning encounter with coffee, Sarah didn't have much of an appetite.

And neither did her friends – to a point, as their portions, even Becker's, were proportionally smaller than those of the Canadian members of their exodus.

Suddenly, a gust of cheerful jokes and laughter came from the cafeteria section where the Mounties were sitting. "He who laughs last laughs best," Sarah said sourly. She didn't mean any-thing by it, but the others at her table exchanged meaningful looks.

"I see that we're rubbing off onto her," Caroline suddenly spoke, grinning slightly. "Sarah, relax. All bad things will come to an end and we will see the sunshine and play in the rain yet."

Sarah just snarled and suddenly grabbed the temples of her head – the hangover's headache was back.

* * *

The cemetery looked like a mess, with most of the tombstones riddled with bullets, dislodged by grenades, or splattered by bug guts, or, much more unfortunately, by human blood or flesh – some of the megaopterans had gotten lucky.

"Is this how your usual field missions work out?" Lester asked with a grimace, as he carefully watched his step, less he'd step into something nasty. "Yes?"

"Pretty much so," Connor nodded, still wiping the side of his head with some snow. "It may suck, but the satisfaction of a job well done-"

"-is better than the dissatisfaction of a job done poorly," Lester finished flatly. "Temple, you were not amusing when you were staying at my apartment, and now-"

"-I haven't had time to move yet," Connor said cheerfully, "so I am still staying at your apartment, not-"

"-not if I have anything to say about," Lester turned to Abby. "Can you help your boyfriend move out?"

Unexpectedly, Abby blanched. "Before we left, I, uh, left Rex at your place-"

Now, it was Lester's turn to blanch. "I think it's time for you to extract him, alongside your boyfriend and his other two little friends, now. I'll give you a ride."

"Can I come?" Danny asked curiously – he'd never been at Lester's place before.

"Oh fine, come along," Lester rolled his eyes. "I'll update you about Jenny's situation as well."

* * *

Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Jenny Lewis abruptly woke-up from her daydream as her nose suddenly itched. _Somebody is thinking about me – probably Danny or Lester,_ she mused. _Oh well, we'll just wait and see what the future will bring._

To be continued...


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless they're original.  
Note: This chapter contains some spoilers from the canon series._

**Chapter twenty-two**

That particular Canadian mountain ridge meant them glumly – few birds singing, few squirrels scurrying, few flies flying, and no people at all.

Well, a few, at any rate – a skeleton staff that ran the diminutive local Mountie airport, designed for largish helicopters rather than airplanes...and that's what they flew the last stretch of their aerial journey: in large, government-issue helicopters, designed specifically for long national flights.

Well, longish anyways, because the flight from Calgary to their destination place in the mountains somehow seemed shorter, probably because of the weather – still stifling and overcast, it nonetheless was nowhere near as bad as the weather they had experienced on their flight to Calgary, and there were no obvious (or probably concealed) time anomalies in the path of the helicopters that laboriously flew towards their destination. In short, it was a normal, rational, well-balanced flight... yet Sarah was feeling worse than when they had crashed in Calgary's international airport, and not because of a hangover, that had practically dissipated at this point.

After a brief but determined self-struggle, she turned to Becker and others for cross-consultation and admitted her inner turmoil.

"It's only natural," Becker shrugged. Surprisingly, he didn't appear discomfited at all, and neither was anyone else: Becker's men (who had escaped mostly unharmed from the catastrophe in Calgary's airport) were mostly napping or gambling or discussing their girlfriends and boyfriends; Caroline was talking something encouraging to her big dog, and Jenny was reading over several files that she asked Sarah to prepare during the night in the hotel (before Culver came over and the ARC 'meeting' devolved into an impromptu drinking party), at least partially oblivious to their surrounds, including some... enthusiastic shouts of the Mounties in the frontal compartment, seceded over to them by Becker and Jenny without much arguments.

"As I was saying – Sarah, are you still listening? – I can by now probably safely guarantee that there is going to be a trap, it's only natural," Becker was continuing, meanwhile. "Twice we were ambushed already, and each time the traps were quite complex. The first time, we won only because we were expecting some like those, uh – what were they?"

"Therapsids, I think, not theropods," Sarah responded.

"Right. Anyways, the first time we won only because we were expecting something like this, and... basically, that's the only reason. Even so, several people have died, and we have encoun-tered some sort of a neo-anomaly, much larger than the regular ones, and clearly this had the potential to have been far worse – not to mention we still don't know how will this neo-anomaly affect the time stream, closed or not."

"Secondly," Becker lowered his voice conspirationally, "was the ambush in Calgary. Those animals – never mind what they were called, were herbivores, and thus we managed to regain the control of the situation. Were they carnivores, like the ones in the Museum's garage, the casualties would have been far worse, and we probably be still stuck there, trying to recover from our losses and wounds."

"But, lieutenant-colonel-"

"Sarah, can I finish?"

Sarah nodded.

"Right. Our latest adversary has some very good ideas regarding strategy and tactics, has not-so-good ideas regarding prehistoric beasts, and some very definite ideas about futuristic technology and how it can be used – remember the DNA of the museum's assassins?"

Sarah blinked and just continued to stare at Becker.

"Anyways, people who can figure how to intermix the DNA of humans and non-humans can probably also program a spy satellite or something similar."

"What?"

"Somehow we're being tracked, and a spy satellite or a similar construct is probably the best bet, that's why Jenny and you e-mailed Lester last night, rather than phoned him, remember?"

"I didn't realize this," Sarah said guiltily, "I only thought that it would be cheaper, you know? I guess I am just not cut out for that sort of thing – I only thought that I'd be doing research and dealing with animals, not people or anyone else!"

"Honestly, neither did I, not until I met you... I mean the situation in the British museum," Becker said, blushing slightly. "Before then, I took everything I was told with a grain of salt, and even then, Helen's attack of the clones, caught me very much flat-footed..." his voice trailed away.

"Don't worry," Sarah said, trying to sound more confident than she felt, "I am sure that once Danny and Connor and Abby get back things will get better!"

...All of the above was said during the flight, and now that they had landed...things had reached the above-mentioned development.

* * *

"Holy crap! That makes our adventures seem almost tame – well, if you discount me and Abby almost getting KO'd by the K-T extinction event!" Connor was once more up and charged, like the energizer bunny™, but Lester glared at him and he subsided, somewhat.

"Seriously though, Jenny's theory that water creates some sort of interference or infestation with one time anomaly stabilizer devices is valid and possibly correct. Water is a great conductor of electricity and similar currents, and that's what our machinery has been based on, electromagnetic currents," he thoughtfully paused.

"Now, let's be reasonable," Lester's voice filled the pause. "You have no better idea how to deal with such a time anomaly than Jenny and the others are, right?"

"And so-?"

"So... well, what are your theories? Your plans?" Lester pressed on.

"We no longer have a functional time anomaly remote control like Helen has, but we can possibly power it up and make it work if we have enough time," Connor said firmly. "It had just ran out of juice, we can do something about it, eh?"

"And so-?"

"And so, that's what we're going to do, provided that there's no time anomaly emergency per se, and if Helen doesn't kill out all of humanity in her spare time between now and then," Danny sighed, sounding more tired and lesser bitter than Connor was. "I'm not agreeing with Abby in regards with Helen possessing horns and hooves, but that woman is clearly something else, I would rather face another megaopteran swarm than her."

"And we'll probably have to, in order to retreat the apparatus used by her to load the data into the remote control," Connor said grimly. "The artefact might've been smashed, but the rest of it can still be made to work."

"What?!" Lester suddenly erupted. "That tube of an artefact has been smashed?!"

"Yeah, by Helen herself. After all that trouble she went through to get it, she just smashed it up once she was through with it," Abby snapped. "She certainly knows how to burn bridges, hah?"

"Yes she does, and more than just that, too, it seems," Lester muttered. "Still, let's leave her off for now and get back to matters at hand – moving Connor out of my apartment and back to where he belongs...before going to back to the future, right?"

The others nodded.

* * *

"What is the meaning of this?" lieutenant-colonel Culver's voice came loud and clear over the briskly chilly wind that blew over the nearly abandoned airfield. "Where are our people, you gutless bastards?"

"We're telling you, they're gone! One day they're there, the next they were all gone, and their campsite had been ransacked! All that was left had been some odd footprints – and those foot-prints aren't human! The werewolves must've gotten them first!"

"The werewolves? I thought it was the Wendigo?" officer Muirkirk couldn't help but put her two bits in, yet the result was totally unexpected, even by her: the airfield officer emitted a shrill scream, tore his clothing out of Culver's embrace, and fled towards his truck, followed by his last two co-workers: within minutes they were gone... even as Muirkirk, Becker and several other people wrestled Culver down into submission in order to prevent him from gunning the escapees from where they stood (or ran).

Finally, Culver stopped struggling, but there was a new fierceness in his eyes, resembling the one Becker and the others had seen in the eyes of the now-hospitalized RCMP colonel Winters. "Those bastards have abandoned my men! Other bastards had them killed! This will not be for-gotten or forgiven or abandoned! This is war and we will triumph!"

This cry was quickly called up and spread out by the other people in the RCMP group, and even quicker it grew into a roaring bellow that thundered around the small and dusty airport - something that prompted the helicopter pilots and crew to finish unloading their groups' belongings and fly off as fast as they could as well.

Caroline Steele just looked at her co-workers, one of her eyebrows cocked in the direction of the now-militant RCMP people and the rather more sarcastic and stable rest of their Canadian co-horts, her silent message loud and clear: _this is going nowhere fast, so obviously something is ought to be done..._

But what?

_To be continued..._


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter twenty-three**

_Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, all characters belong to Impossible Pictures.  
Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the official series._  
As the RCMP officers and agents began to slowly cluster to one another, clearly intent on working out a practical – hopefully – strategy, Jenny shot the others a thoughtful look. "Have you noticed something?" she said _sotto voce_, "Shieldage isn't here."

"Who?"

"Shieldage, the one whom we picked up in Toronto?"

"That's because he was one of those who came worse off in Calgary," Sarah said, also quietly. "We were all just busy with Becker and the rest of our own, so we didn't pay as much attention to the rest of them."

"I see – then perhaps it is time to rectify this mistake somehow and figure out how to contact him and what-not."

"I think," Becker said in an over-the-top sort of voice, "that someone else has already got that idea, or something along those lines, see?" he pointed his thumb in one direction, from which OPP officer Ancona Muirkirk was slowly approaching them.

Jenny's eyes narrowed: "Interesting."

Sarah gulped.

/ / /

The race track stood still empty and unused this early in the morning, without even a skeleton staff to oversee either it in general or the time anomaly located in it in particular. Still, the wind didn't carry the smell of blood or any other unpleasant smell on itself, and there were no mysterious tracks or sounds – at least not of the kind that is noticed immediately – either.

Still, it was a nervous group of ARC field agents – and Lester – who approached their old time anomaly manipulation apparatus in the race track's garage building. Nothing seemed to have been lost or misplaced or dislocated, and the dogs – and when did the ARC re-start to have dogs since their first run-in with the future predators, Abby mused – also seemed to be behaving normally, so all had to be all right, yes?

Meanwhile, Connor just flipped the switch on the current time anomaly manipulation apparatus, emitting an electro-magnetic charge, and causing the time anomaly into the future to become active. Almost immediately, the dogs went berserk, as a massive limb covered in armored hide the color of old amber and tipped with several claws that were as long as a man was wide, slammed down through the time anomaly, followed by another limb, and a blunt, almost eyeless and ear-less muzzle, that however boasted a pair of massive nostrils and a jaw that could do honors to a great white shark.

"Gah!" Connor immediately flipped the switch the other way, resealing the time anomaly and trapping the new intruder within it. "That's not a future predator, Abby, that's not it!"

"Well, I would rather say that that's a future predator, not the future predator," Abby blinked. "Those teeth and claws were not designed for roots or berries!"

For several moments Connor and Abby just stared at each other and at the others. "There is," Danny said slowly, "the other time anomaly, in the old office building of Christine Johnson. It's possible that we'll be able to go through there instead."

"But what if there's another one of those things on the other side?" Connor was clearly flustered, though for a good reason: the beast that had almost come through this time anomaly had been on the huge size of things. "We will probably need bigger guns."

"Yes, we'll do," Danny said calmly. "So let's go back to base and get them."

...As they left, Danny cast a furtive glance at the now-closed time anomaly, as it twinkled innocently in the twilight of the early morning, deceptively hiding within its' depth a bloodthirsty monster – just like a woman...

Danny just blinked and his eyes widened in shock: now where this thought did had come from?

/ / /

"Uh, hey again," Ancona Muirkirk said quietly, "how was the landing?"

"Same as yours, I suppose," Jenny carefully grabbed the other woman by the elbow and led her somewhat away from the point of view of Culver and his cohorts. "Speaking of landing, now what?"

"As you know, Shieldage has gotten hurt, plus there's been a lot of damage, and Calgary's air-port is very important to it, so now the government is getting involved, but unfortunately, it's the wrong government."

"Excuse me?"

"Right, wrong choice of word. In our country, we have federal and provincial governments; with the territories, it's slightly different, but not that much. Anyways, the trick is while Ottawa has plenty of pull, once you get west of Ontario, it's just not that much pull, and Edmonton, say, will try to do things different from Ottawa."

"So-o?"

"So, we're going to have – initially, at first – a lot of pushing and arm-wrestling between the provincial and federal government, long enough, say, for Culver to do something really stupid and kill most of his men, if not the rest of us as well."

"I think I remember Winters telling us that the police forces of the territories were currently involved in a bureaucratic match regarding whose responsibility this was, besides the Mounties'," Jenny said slowly. "This is something like this, hah?"

"Yeah, but on a higher level, so the slugging match will be longer and stronger," Ancona sounded rather displeased, yet resigned herself. "So, our trick will be to survive at least the first few days or weeks before Culver's down to a more reasonable level of character, wouldn't you agree?"

"Absolutely," Jenny's vocal tone and face were carefully bland, product of a long time of working as a PR spin doctor. "And Lazrev and his boss?"

"Same deal as with us," Ancona nonchalantly shrugged, "really want to sink their teeth into the problem, really believe that Culver is shaping to become the second problem, they'll co-operate."

"So then," Jenny said, putting a note of excitement into her voice, though still keeping an eye out on Culver, lest he become attentive of his surroundings once more, "what's the plan?"

Ancona told her.

/ / /

"So, what do we have in lieu of big guns, and tranquilizer guns probably won't cut it?" Connor asked Danny as they made their temporary stop at the ARC. "Do we have a grenade launcher or something?"

"I believe that is going to be tricky," Danny mused, "since most of the weaponry is designed – or rather, not designed – to be used on futuristic animals, and most of the equipment is rather light-weight, figuratively speaking.`

"Hah?"

"Anything that you've seen on such a movie like the Terminator™, you can probably forget it."

"Oh! Bugger! Can't we ask Lester to-"

"Quinn! Get up here! Immediately!" Lester's voice came up through the building's intercom. "Five minutes before now!"

The ARC's field team exchanged looks: Lester sounded more like his usual self than a scared self, but then again, it was hard to tell Lester's selves apart; it might be an emergency, but then again, it might not."

"Let's go," Danny said slowly. "We'll figure it out on the spot."

/ / /

"This is working rather well, though for some reason I am feeling more like Connor than my usual self," Becker admitted, "and I am not sure that that's a good thing."

"That's because it's not," Jenny admitted. "Culver may be a bit crazy by now, but he is honest in his approach to solution, and frankly, he's a bit like us – we too tend to charge head first, rather than go politicking – that's more of Lester's thing, or mine, initially..." her voice trailed away as she looked at the other members of the impromptu ARC camp. "What is it, Caroline?"

"They are all are just such suckers, in an innocent sort of way, but innocents in a rash and stubborn sort of way, too," the other woman shrugged. "I daresay that we're looking at a 'damned if we do, damned if we don't' kind of choice. The only way we can prevent them from being killed and listening to us, if we take charge, and take it by force – something that probably clashes with Lester's orders, correct?"

"She has a point," Becker admitted reluctantly. "In fact, I would say that that's the point – we can either follow our orders or follow our intuition, and intuition says," he paused, "intuition says that this team is falling apart, especially with Ellenton dead and Winters incapacitated, and the government not taking it all seriously at all."

"Not seriously enough, rather, after the airport incident, I have to argue," Caroline shook her head, "but that is just logistics, and we need to talk tactics, or strategy, or something else. Any takers?"

"First," Jenny said firmly, "we get the time anomaly detectors running and functional. And then," her eyes glittered dangerously, "we start to gain control over the time anomaly and whoever's running it, Helen or not! Simple enough for the start?"

"Yes, simple enough to maybe survive the collision with reality," Becker nodded.

"Then Sarah – get the working!"

"Yes ma'am!"

/ / /

Meanwhile, half a world away, Danny and the others just stared at what just had to be a clone of Christine Johnson, sitting in a very comfortable poise in Lester's official chair, because if this was the original, then the implications would have been even more disturbing, as this Christine had a scar on the right side of her face and a very, very 'exotic' hair style, plus only one eyebrow – essentially, almost a complete antipode of the meticulous woman that they knew and hated.

"Are you a clone?" Danny managed to ask through the suddenly parched lips.

"I guess I am – is it important?" Christine's tone was haughty, just like the original's.

"Why are you here?"

"Because Helen sent me to tell you that several hulks have moved over to your original time anomaly into the future, and that I am probably the last clone made by her for a while, so you better adjust your strategies accordingly," Christine continues to grimace in a way similar to a smile.

"Hulks – look like eyeless and earless dragons, right?"

"With a row of spikes on their back, can climb better than the future predators and have hides tough enough to withstand their blows – or the megaopterans'," Christine adds calmly. "You better get armor-piercing rounds if you're to deal with them."

"Well, aren't you a Santa's little helper," Lester snapped. "Just what are you getting out of all this... advice?"

"She showed me footage of your wake for me, how it quickly became a disco dancing party from 1970s," Christine-clone's voice was somehow softer now, and Lester suddenly blanched some-what. "She implied that I was liked even less than her, and I don't like it. So, I'll be taking my revenge by showing those high heels, James Lester, into places on your body where sun had never shone!" As she said it, she got up and pulled out a pair of high-heeled shoes from under the table. "I suggest that you run!"

And Lester ran, faster than a speeding bullet, pursued by an equally fast clone.

"Well," Danny looked at the others, "this is new. Interesting and exciting too."

The other two just nodded, as Lester's yowl shook the whole ARC building, top to bottom, showing just how interesting and exciting he thought that this was.

"Well, let's go help him," Danny sighed, and Connor and Abby reluctantly nodded.

_To be continued..._


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, not to me._

**Chapter twenty-four**

Eventually, James Lester was cornered in the kitchen, where Christine's clone had come upon him, a high-heeled shoe in each hand and a murderous expression on her scarred face. "John, and Mary, and Joseph!" Lester silently prayed, sensing an unavoidable wave of pain coming his way. "Deliver me, and I will give each of you a candle composed of a pound's weight of wax!"

Thunder didn't resonate, and a lightning bolt didn't smite the clone Christine down dead, instead, she continued to approach, intent on grievous bodily harm. Lester gulped, and tried a different tactic. "Helen," he began resolutely, "if you are as bad as Abby and the others make you out to be-"

Somebody – namely Danny – slammed into the clone, wrestling her to the ground. "That's quite enough," he told her firmly, "no more hurting Lester! We need him to sign out release forms for weaponry, for one thing."

"Weaponry – any weapons that you'll use in the future will need to be fire or acid – bullets are too precise or inefficient to be of use against the future predators!"

"Oh? Helen used a tazer against us-"

"Are you future predators?"

"No?"

"Then why should it count?"

"Because-"

"If we're finished with this meeting of inquiring minds," Lester's voice is still somewhat thin and reedy, but already getting back to its' usual timbre, "can we get back to what's actually im-portant? Like, say, your equipment list?"

It was at that point Lorraine appeared, saying that could Mr. Lester answer his phone like right now? Since Lorraine used this tone only in the direst emergencies (in Lester-verse, at the very least), James Lester took the call – and he was proven correct.

This wasn't a direst emergency yet – it was the next worst thing.

* * *

"Ah, Jenny, can I have a talk with you?" Sarah said in uncertain tones, seeing her superior chat with the head of the scientific team from ROM. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, I just want to tell that we're, uh, finished with the assembly-"

"Very good," Jenny said graciously, and turned back to the laboratory worker turned team leader. "Here is the equipment that I was talking about; I assume that now we can implement the rest of Becker's plan?" the last part of the phrase was addressed to Sarah instead.

The archaeologist turned researcher only nodded, still unsure of the plan that Jenny and Becker had come up (eventually), once she and Caroline began to assemble the time anomaly detectors. Essentially, it was the same plot as they had deduced upon before, as they admitted that they didn't like the idea of Culver leading his people either to doom or humiliation, and so, they have adjusted their strategy... accordingly.

"Ah yes, the plan," the ROM leader, conversely, had no problems per se with Jenny's plan, on the other hand. "I must say that mother England had certainly kept things close to her bosom, eh? All this amazing technological achievement and advancement, while we were stuck in the past!.."

Here, Jenny could only vaguely constrain her grimace – while Ellenton had been overly enthusiastic, and Bradshaw and the other people they had met at ROM had been rather confusing and complicated, overly bookish, you might add, the 'new guy' was simply annoying and opportunis-tic, even worse than Ancona, who, at least, had a legitimate reason to dislike and distrust the Mounties, due to the initial actions of colonel Winters. This person... had no excuse like that, and thus reminded her strongly of Leek even more so than now hospitalized Shieldage had. And his enthusiasm, frankly, was both annoying and obnoxious.

"Right, was the only reason we let Culver go off half-cocked like that," Jenny's smile made her teeth hurt, at times like these she wished she was more like Caroline, whose smiles generally demonstrated that only self-restraint prevented her from going for the throat. As it was, her own smile came off more than a little obsequious, and it didn't make her feel too happy. "So, do we have an agreement?"

The man emphatically nodded.

* * *

Becker was beginning to have his first doubts about the whole plan: it seemed to be progressing too smoothly, both Ancona and Lazrev were quite eager to not engage the enemy in a direct confrontation just yet, but to put one over him and Culver's Mounties – the latter being just a bonus, hopefully.

"Becker, I like this idea a whole lot, even though it may not succeed – the time anomaly might be passive or even absent, as it happened in Calgary's airport," Lazrev was definitely smarter than how he appeared to be acting back in Toronto. "This gives us a chance to put one over the competition, prove our worth and generally feel more useful than just staying here, doing nothing. I'm in."

"Me too, though I am not as enthusiastic," Ancona admits, a bit hesitant. "Still we'll need to leave some people here or in the hamlet to set up camp."

"Certainly. How many do you propose?"

"Let's make a head count," Ancona frowned in thought, "and make individual lists about whom can we spare and who can we take. Then we compare our lists and brainstorm. How about it?"

Becker and Lazrev exchange looks. "I guess we can do that," Becker says, as his feelings of dis-comfiture rise another notch: not unlike Culver, Ancona is clearly someone who will not just go along quietly the ARC's way, and frankly, she reminds him a bit of Christine Johnson, albeit a lesser version (not that the original was such a great piece of work to begin with), and that could be trouble in the future.

Not for the first, and certainly not for the last time this week, Becker really wants Danny and others to be aware of what's going on as back-up team, unaware that his wish is coming true even as he doesn't say it aloud.

* * *

"What do you mean, 'no, we can't go to the future'?" Connor's voice is frankly incredulous. "What's going on, Lester?"

"The situation has changed," Lester replied coolly, "and I am required to keep you at hand."

"By whose order?"

"The prime minister's of our Majesty's government. The situation, apparently, is escalating dangerously – more people have been killed, mostly those of Winters' department, the RCMP. That, coupled with the fact that a plane has been destroyed – with more casualties, I should add – is making the situation in Canada a very high priority for us, even more so than Helen Cutter."

"But she-"

"But we are workers of Her Majesty's government," Lester said flatly, "so we have to do what's the best for it, so no going off to the future via Christine Johnson's old building – I'm having it quarantined just in case all the same, so it's a no go all the same."

Mechanically, Connor turned to face Christine. "Don't look at me," she said harshly, "I'm just a clone remember? I'm happy if Lester won't carve me up and study the organs after I'm dead, like he did with the clone of your personal guru."

Connor blinked and stared harshly at Lester, alongside his companions:

"You did what?"

Lester visibly wilted and began to explain.

* * *

Meanwhile, millions of years into the future, a woman who had risen from the dead was staring hard across the distance, across the mountains and the sea. "My boy, my foundling boy," she whispered softly, "what have you done to yourself and others while I was going megalomaniac? But now... I have help, I have recovered, and I will help you – and if you resist, well tough love!" she smiled slightly.

Down below, a hulk, on the search for prey, suddenly stiffened, as its keen sense of smell caught a smell that it didn't usually sense – that of a danger, something immensely powerful and very, very old. Though these futuristic animals weren't the smartest creatures around, this one instinc-tively knew what to do – it fled with its tail between the legs as fast as it could.

Meanwhile, back at her post, the woman continued to smile, ignoring her surroundings; it was a very strange smile, and not altogether nasty. "My boy," she whispered once again, "a storm is coming, and it has your name on it. Soon, you will know what ARC members are like, and what I am like. My boy, operation invictus has begun!"

Far behind her, thunder rumbled and sky darkened and wind picked up – and it was going to go all across the seas of time, just as the woman wanted it.

A storm was coming.

_To be continued..._


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless they're OC.  
Note: This chapter contains some spoilers for the official series._

**Chapter twenty-five**

_The past, three million years ago..._

"Good-bye, Danny!" the woman calmly tells the man standing underneath a stony bluff, just before an adult deinonychus, displaced from its' proper time, ambushes her and knocks both her and itself off the bluff, thus making her words more appropriate than she had ever intended – and the man just stares at the two corpses, as well as at the corpses of the australopithecines, killed earlier by some industrial-strength toxins.

The man just stares at her, says something under his nose, and leaves – and he never notices another pair of eyes, another pair of human eyes, stare at him from some acacia shrubs a short distance away, watching the original man leave, never betraying their presence by a call, until the older man leaves. Then the other leaves as well, still silent, still thoughtful, still rather bloody from his own fight...

_The past, less than 190 000 years ago..._

The fire is burning bright, real bright, though the fuel is kind of rancid, but the young man who is warming himself in the heat, and basking in the fire light, is ignoring that downside... in fact, he appears to ignore everything else in his surroundings, at least until someone else approaches him, somebody whom he doesn't know very well – but well enough.

"You," he says as his interlocutrix approaches him from the right, "I don't know you, but I saw you – I saw you die."

"You did, did you?" the woman echoes him calmly, seemingly more interesting in his fire than in him. "How did it happen?"

"A dinosaur came from behind you, and you fell, and you lie there, I know not where, alongside some mutant chimps or whenever, and that, that guy he just left you there, go and haunt him instead."

"Another man? Interesting – I already took care of Nick, and Stephen himself is long gone and done..." the woman's voice trails away, "it must be someone new, someone who arose once Nick was gone..." her face grows thoughtful and she falls silent.

For a while, there are only some more crackling of the flames, and the two people, looking at them with a similar lack of passion, just with a varying degree. "So," the woman finally speaks, "what's your poison?"

"Excuse me?"

"You don't have to be mad to venture through the time anomalies, but it shortens the process immensely, and something tells me, anyways, that that applies precisely to you – this burning of several bodies is a likely candidate. So, confess – I, for example, have megalomania, most likely. And you?"

The young man turns to himself, his face finally animated by an insecure smile – and it is quite nasty! "Homicidal, I believe, and yes, you're right, I was so before I came here – I blame my family."

"Yes, I suppose that you do," the woman sighs. "Young man, want some advice? You want to work out your murderous urges, go to the Oligocene."

"How do I get there?"

The woman points her time anomaly remote control at the bonfire, and a time anomaly opens, albeit of a different tint due to the light interference of the flames. "You can go that way," she says firmly.

"Fair enough, and if you want to find your corpse, you should go diagonally to my left, and then go straight, once you came to the mammoth's corpse – it is a mammoth, for that's the name of the furry elephants, right?"

"You're a very thoughtful young man."

"No, I am not – I want you to go to the Polar star as fast as possible, which is the proper place of all the restless dead," the young man replies and fearlessly walks through the time anomaly, as it snaps shut behind him. The woman just smiles a smile of her own – as enigmatic as her former interlocutor's was nasty – and walks off in the indicated direction, leaving the fire burning among the snow, attracting something nasty and powerful in the darkened forest of an Ice Age night...

_The past, three million years ago_

The woman is emerging from the time anomaly, and is walking over to her corpse, still lying underneath the corpse of a raptor, noticing, with a slight frown, the fact that her supply bag had been looted. And then she touches her own corpse – their outlines begin to blur – and a shrill, inhuman cry begins to race through time, as the woman, originally walking or being engaged in some other business in some other time, stops whatever she was doing whenever, stiffens, and screams:

"I still live!"

Her face gets sweat-drenched, her eyes become as wide as saucers, metaphorically speaking, her body trembles and is drenched in sweat.

"I still live!"

Her body flickers in and out, like a TV picture with a bad static attack, as if something powerful is trying to erase all of the woman and her 'versions' from all over Earth's chronological history; in fact, all of her chronological clones experience the death of one of theirs, and live through it for it is not _their_ death specifically, and theus they all grow stronger - and as they do that, 'the sum of their parts' grows stronger too.

"I died and yet I still live!"

Silvery flames begin to lick the outline of the 'original' woman, eventually spreading onto the raptor's corpse – and it shrivels, as around 62 million years of Earth's chronological history reduce it from dead flesh and bone into fossilized dust, blown away by the Pliocene wind.

"I am dead and yet I lived through it and thus I am a paradox!"

Silvery flames begin lick through the woman's body all over the chronological history of Earth, and then her body stiffens, and tenses, and the flames dissipate, leaving her as she was.

"I lived, I died, I returned to live, I have reached apotheosis, I am a paradox!"

All throughout Earth chronological history, the woman smiles – and it's a rather wicked, triumphant smile, a smile of a person who has survived despite all odds.

"...and now," the woman says, climbing down a tree in the Late Jurassic time period, "it's time for me to attend to my wake."

_The past, three million years ago_

There is nothing left of the woman's corpse, or of the raptor's corpse, but something catches the woman's eye all the same – the tracks of a dinofelis, a "false sabre-tooth cat", who had feasted on the corpses of australopithecines – and on one other corpse: in reaching apotheosis, the woman had changed history in several time lines where her presence had been especially prominent.

"Ah," the woman says, as she observes a human skull with the clear markings of the dinofelis' canines scouring its' surface, "that's one way to end it all, but... where the honour in that?" She smiles and vanishes in a chromatically white flash of a time anomaly. As she does, the surround-ing scenery changes slightly: the rest of the human skeleton, ravaged by the dinofelis, vanishes as well, but the backpack, equally out of time and equally ravaged by the Cainozoic predator, remains...

_The past, sixty-five million years ago_

The woman is now walking over a world, ravaged by the massive meteorite that had slammed into the Earth, creating global cataclysms – earthquakes and volcano eruptions, tsunamis and strongly acidic rain. All over the world the rule of the dinosaurs laid in ruins, and their successors – the small, furry mammals that lived in trees or in subterranean burrows – were slowly beginning to recover from the latest Armageddon and regain control of their lives...onto a new level.

The woman noticed several specimens of Purgatorius race past her up a fallen tree, and gave them a warm smile, which they promptly ignored. Leaving a mental note to herself to return to this day in the time stream later, the woman walked over to another section of the ravaged world, and began to chip away at section of cooled-down lava, the igneous rock, using a smallish, futuristic-looking shovel, designed and bought for just such occasions. Very soon her goal emerged – a pair of skeletons, human skeletons, locked together by magma in a final embrace, limbs intertwined, jaws pressed together in a final kiss.

For several long minutes the woman just stared at the deceased lovers, together to the end, and then she firmly removed the skulls from the rest of the skeletons, and vanished in the flash of a time anomaly – and as the aftermaths of the flash faded away, so did the rest of the skeletons.

...Meanwhile, around sixty-two million years in the future of the post-Mesozoic world, a man wandering alone in the highlands of the Great Rift, brought to almost desperate despair by his loneliness, received two 'handfuls' of his close friends who fell through a time anomaly from a certain doom to uncertain salvation...

_The past, several days before the death of Stephen Harper..._

"Ms. Johnson – are you willing to live up to your reputation, namely that you're willing to sell your soul for power? Hmm? Are you?"

_The future, five to ten millions after the Holocene (the Age of Humans)..._

The woman was walking down the highlands towards a building located in a valley, her face grim, yet her eyes were smiling. A slithering, semi-transparent, amorphous thing had partially emerged from a darkened crevasse behind and to the side of the human, with two tentacles almost three meters long tasting the air. As it sensed the passer-by, it withdrew back into its hide-out even quicker than it had emerged – but the woman didn't notice:

A storm was coming, and she was going to be a part of it.

_To be continued..._


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless they're OC._

**Chapter twenty-six**

"I am feeling more and more as a third wheel," Sarah admitted to Jenny, as the two of them remained in the main camp (built a bit over to the side of the helicopter airport, in a rather fortified position), "or not as a third wheel, but still as irrelevant or not as important as-"

"Sarah, you're babbling," Jenny said wearily, "take a deep breath and a deep swig of Seltzer™. All will work out – today, at least."

"Today?"

"As of this very moment and until the sunset."

Sarah groaned. As Becker had pointed out to them, including Sarah, the attackers were probably nocturnal – personality-wise, the hidden traps were another matter – and thus hid during the day in a hide-out, waiting for the night-time, a much more convenient time for an active ambush.

Sarah had remembered all of the above – really – but this was a little consolation to what she was actually feeling as of right now. "I think you misunderstood me," she said quietly, "I do not feel afraid – well, yes, I do, but rather I feel displaced, useless; I would rather be-"

"I know how you feel – by now," Jenny admitted with a slight smile. "It was this shape of mind that caused me to leave our center, because Danny was doing my job so much better than I was."

"Well, no, no, you two are just different. Maybe after this is done and we're back in England, you two-"

"Sarah, thanks, but don't. Danny is a good man and a good leader, but I don't want any piece of him, or of the ARC, really," Jenny shook her head, her lips pursed. "I am doing this because I have to, not because I want to."

"Well, I don't want to do this either, but-" Sarah caught Jenny's decided non-amused look and sighed.

"Jenny, look. You told me to stop sucking up and feeling guilty, and by now I have. Yes, I probably underestimate the value of Nick in your life, but you're getting over the top and turning from genuinely bereaved to childishly temper tantrums. You're missing out on an interesting job, on a big piece of your life-"

"No, I am not. Sarah, didn't you hear me? I'm here because I have to, not because I want to, and once this is all over, it's over. Have I missed you people? Of course. Did I want you to call me? Naturally. Did I miss this job? Yes. But I never really wanted to go back – that page of my life is over."

Sarah slowly stared at Jenny, and a new look appeared on her face. "You're wrong," she said firmly, "you're one of us. You're just channelling Caroline, somewhat, who's a bit bitter and confused, but is also one of us- are you listening to me?"

Wordlessly, Jenny pointed out to the stationary (well, semi-stationary) time anomaly detector, which was clearly transmitting some sort of signal. Immediately, Sarah grabbed the walkie-talkie and went to contact Becker and others, interpersonal enmity forgotten.

* * *

"They're planning a pincer movement."

"Impressive."

"Especially since their numbers have been depleted, and not replenished yet."

"The replenishments will not arrive in time."

"No, no they won't – the other half may not arrive in time."

"The more experienced foes must be taken out first."

"And so they will be."

* * *

The route that Becker, Lazrev and Muirkirk had decided upon was simple, and rather perpendicular to the route of Culver's team: they planned to take a purposefully alternative route to the Mounties' force – right now, Culver worried them more than any potentially dangerous animals from past, present or future they were likely to meet, and the same went for traps.  
As an added protection, they did leave the lesser half of their teams back in the camp, which was beginning to look at least somewhat fortified and not like an open camp site under the unfriendly skies, unlike the Mounties' previous version.

On the other hand, Becker would have to admit, Culver and his underlings knew how to walk through the woods, while they didn't, more suited for urban warfare, or not at all. The woods around them appeared even emptier and devoid of life, than the area around the airport and the small town – no squirrels were scurrying in the trees, no butterflies or bees were flying between them, no birds were flying in the air-

Becker frowned and exchanged looks with Lazrev and Ancona. "Are ravens supposed to be forming such large flocks or is it a local thing?" he asked his cohorts. "'Cause their behaviour reminds a bit of vultures, and that's not good."

"These aren't ravens," Ancona said slowly, after looking at the flocking birds through the bin-oculars. "These are crows."

"Say what? I've seen crows-"

"Our crows are a bit different from yours and look much more like ravens," Lazrev said apolo-getically. "But you're right – this isn't good." He paused. "Isn't that the direction in which Culver's people had gone, as well?"

There was a lull in the short conversation, as the trio just looked at each other in silent suspicion, and then, a loud growl in a low timbre startled them.

"People," Caroline Steele quietly walked over to them, "my dogs smell something, and it partially scares, and partially angers them. I do not know what can cause such a mixed reaction in them, and I do not like it."

"But can they lead us to its' source? We suspect that that flock of crows may be above it," Ancona said quickly.

Caroline paused, exchanged the ammo in her shotgun for something that definitely wasn't rock salt, grabbed Michael firmly close to the collar and nodded in agreement.

"Then let's go."

* * *

_Few hours earlier..._

A nose of a human, as opposed to the nose of a dog, isn't quite designed to be responsive to most natural smells, but this smell was too intense to be natural: it resembled a slaughterhouse, maybe, or the carnivores' domain in the zoo, a heavy, almost tangible smell of sweat, dirty fur, and blood.

"Well now, people," Culver's own grin resembled a snarl of a large predator, "I think we just have found something – if not our throat-ripping friend, then some more of those out-of-time creatures, in other words, a chance to show them what we are truly capable of! Let's move!"

And they did – slowly, carefully, with their weapons locked, and loaded, and with silencers on, they approached the source of the smell, moving carefully towards their goal, encircling it, ready to shoot. They were members of RCMP, some of quite high rank, many of them – professionals in such kind of situation... but unfortunately it was the wrong kind of situation: as they began to move in within the shooting range of their weapons, they were shot at.

And with a lethal accuracy: the first barrage of shots was highly successful, at least one third of Culver's force went down with heavy, or even mortal wounds, including the lieutenant-colonel himself, who had his brains blown out by a careful shot. What's force, this barrage was so suc-cessful and unexpected, that the survivors had hesitated and wasted away the critical minutes, and so the second mass shot laid low most of the survivors of the first... the people who remained on their feet alive didn't outlive their peers for too long, for their assailants decided to enter the melee, and the few, disorganized humans were no match for their teeth or fists.

* * *

_Now..._

A gruesome sight lay before the eyes of Becker, Lazrev, Muirkirk and others – dead people, stripped practically naked, lying in a woodpile like so much firewood was not a sight for sore eyes, and the crows, who were slowly landing onto the pile and beginning to taste the corpses, were not a very big improvement on the situation either.

Ancona – proving that unlike, say, Christine Johnson, she had some basic human values left – made a move towards the pile, apparently planning to start putting apart the pile and possibly calling for help and assistance for a civilized burial of those people, when Caroline Steele grabbed her by an arm.

"No, officer, not now. My dogs are nervous, and the birds are wary too – whatever or whoever had killed those people might still be around, we probably need a better strategy," she turned to Becker. "Any ideas?"

"Caroline? Discharge your gun into the flock overhead," Becker said slowly.

Shrugging, Caroline adjusted her weapon and did just that. Since her weapon was loaded with more than grapeshot of an average size, the result was rather horrific: the flock scattered in all the direction, with some of the birds falling onto the ground in many, many pieces instead.

"That," Caroline began but froze, as a chorus of deep, gravelly, insane-sounding laughter came from the woods, higher up the mountainside: whoever was in charge of this response clearly was not intimidated by Caroline's discharge. Yet Caroline wasn't through yet, or rather her dog, the big Brazilian mastiff called Michael, wasn't: abruptly the big dog released a rumbling cry, re-sembling a roar of a bear or a lion than a dog's bark, which started as a low rumbling sound, but eventually rose into higher notes – and crashed back into silence.

Absolute silence. The gravelly, mocking laughter had stopped, but the resulting silence was just as bad: Becker, for once, could practically feel the heavy glower full of bestial hatred, yet not quite bestial all the same.

"Officer," he turned to Muirkirk, "we're leaving now – but I promise," here he raised his voice, "that we'll be back to bury them by our custom!"

Still silence, and Becker, with Ancona grabbing his arm as if it was an anchor of some sorts – and maybe it was – began to leave the departure from the mountainside.

Halfway on their way to the camp, their walkie-talkies turned active: Jenny and Sarah wanted to talk.

* * *

The mood that afternoon at the camp was horrified: probably it was only the lack of helicopters - or other vehicles – that prevented many people from abandoning the camp then and there. Naturally, that didn't improve their spirits, and so many of them – especially the ROM laboratory workers – were seriously downcast.

Others, however, while no more upbeat, but, nonetheless, were busier under the management of Becker and Lazrev – and also Ancona, albeit to a lesser degree – setting up the fortifications in a hurried tempo, before the nightfall, when all the Hell would break loose.

Sarah found herself sitting next to Caroline, who was grooming the dogs and telling them some-thing reassuring – usually, Sarah would've found this highly disturbing, but after Becker's report, well...

"Um, Caroline?" she finally decided to speak up, "after... after tonight is over, can we talk about... about some people?"

Caroline turned and looked at the other woman, her eyes unexpectedly shiny and dry. "Sarah Page," she said coolly, "whenever we talk, we usually end up with some sort of unpleasantries, usually related to... more abstract themes, and tonight we just might bloody well die, and – and, let's wait till morning and see if we're both in the mood, okay?"

Sarah gulped and nodded – this was actually better than what she had expected from the other woman. Her business with Caroline done, she sat down – and was suddenly hugged by the latter, albeit briefly.

"It looked like you could use one," Caroline elaborated, as she went back to her dogs, and Sarah nodded in startled gratitude.

And overhead, the sun was sinking ever lower behind the mountains.

Night was coming.

_To be continued..._


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless stated otherwise._

**Chapter twenty-seven**  
For several moments Connor and the others just stared at Lester, and then the younger man simply exploded:

"Say what?" he snapped, looking angrier at Lester than he ever had before. "What have you done, now?"

"I believe you heard me – after that clone died I had studied," Lester snapped back, clearly not very intimidated by Connor's anger.

"Oh? And what about Helen's force? Did you have it studied as well?"

"Naturally," Lester shrugged. "When was the last time you remember my playing favourites re-garding any topic?"

"Those were people!"

"Those were clones – dead ones!"

"They were still people!"

"No, they're not – their brains had even different forms!"

"That's no excuse!"

"True... but it had to be done anyways."

At this statement, Connor stopped short and gave Lester a very baleful look. "James," he said bitterly, "as Nick had once told me, you can be either a good person or a bastard, but until you decide who you want to be, you'll just look daft."

"Professor Cutter," Lester's own voice turned glacial, "suffered a personality flaw of the tendency to stick everything and everyone he came across in his life into labelled little boxes that he put into bigger, but still labelled, lockers, and so on. Undoubtedly, this kind of approach works wonders in the world of palaeontology, but in real life it has its' downsides, like the fact that he was still single after all of those years."

Connor turned red, but Lester wasn't finished yet. "And on that note, Temple," the civil worker continued, "it should also be pointed out that for all of Cutter's complaints about my un-label-able personality, he still worked under me well enough, and so should you!"

Connor opened his mouth to say something scathing in return, and it was when the phone rang.

It was Jenny.

* * *

"Jenny!" Lester's voice on the other end of the world sounded honestly surprised, "what gives? I thought that you were going to e-mail us from now on!"

"Now isn't time, Lester," Jenny shook her head, forgetting that Lester couldn't see her actions, "and the truth is, me and others are almost out of time – by nightfall we're going to be attacked."

"Attacked? By what?"

"By something that can shoot, has firearms, and – according to Becker – has a deep, gravelly laugh and a potential hatred of dogs."

"Say what?"

"Nothing," Jenny shook her head."I'll try to call you in the morning by local standards, if we survive, so try not to go to sleep to early, and catch some rest now, 'kay?" she hanged up, saving battery – the charger wasn't too reliable in the local conditions at all.

* * *

When Lester re-told Jenny's brief message, Danny and others fell silent, albeit briefly. "Shit!" Connor swore. "The situation over there is falling apart, while we're stuck here, unable to go there-"

Before Lester could reply, Danny did.

"Connor," his voice was rather quieter than his usual self, "you're aware the time anomalies join not only two points in time, but in space?"

"Er-"

"Can't you rig your portable time anomaly device to connect us with Jenny?" Danny developed his idea. "I mean, we can locate her via the cell phone, don't we?"

"It doesn't work that way!" Connor snapped. "We and her are in the same time-"

"No, we're not – she's over eight hours into the future from our point of view," Lester said suddenly.

Connor stared. "Excuse me?"

"Different time zones – she's several hours ahead or behind us, Temple, thus not at the same time as we, but in our future or past," Lester elaborated his statement.

Abruptly Connor got onto his feet, a look of concentration on his face. "If anybody needs me, I'll be in the technological lab, adjusting the calibrator scale on the device."

The clone of Christine Johnson made an odd sound.

"What is it, Lassie?" Lester said calmly. "Please, do share it with us."

"He'll need to re-work the whole scale, not merely adjust it: he'll be dealing with a totally different sector of the chronological scale – hours and minutes as opposed to millennia and millions of years."

Lester blinked and stared at the clone. So did the other people.

"Temple, you found your new assistant. Get to work," Lester finally spoke.

Connor nodded and complied.

* * *

"The sun is almost set."

"The time is almost right."

"It's not important to wait for the night."

"Open the time anomaly!"

As the shadows spoke to one another in the accented, barking sounds, one of them pressed a series of commands on a keyboard. Immediately, a smallish, spherical satellite, floating far over-head even the Mackenzie mountain range, sprung to activity, adjusted the position of its' antennae, and emitted a signal of its' own.

Right away, a time anomaly appears halfway down the mountain range, and straight away a cloud of dust began to emit from it, followed by thunder of a stampede...

* * *

The stampede was sensed first not even by the dogs, but by the grounded equipment, as it began to jump up and down from their position, and, overall, vibrate as if affected by some sort of an underground thunder, radiating, though, from one particular direction – it was unknown who first cried out: "Look, it's a stampede!", but they were right.

It was a stampede, and it was a stampede of dicynodonts, the same animals that had been en-countered in Calgary's airport, but older, more mature specimens, and much more dangerous ones, too, armed with dangerous tusks and clashing beaks, they were as big as fully grown cattle, and probably just as dangerous. They were charging down the mountain, raising a cloud of dust taller than even themselves, and then-

- a time anomaly – another time anomaly appeared in their path, and they ran into it, and it slammed shut.

"Okay," Becker spoke into the following silence, "that is new. What has happened here?"

Silence was his only answer...

_To be continued..._


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless noted otherwise._

**Chapter twenty-eight**

Half a world away, in a yard lot behind the main ARC building, with most of the Centre's em-ployees observing it with clear curiosity.

"All right, people!" Connor's voice rang clear with authority. "Stand back and watch my very own, re-calibrated, time anomaly manifestation machine is ready to be put into practice! Assistant, flip the switch!"

The clone of Christine Johnson looked as if she would rather flip Connor the bird, but shrugged, and complied all the same. Immediately, a time anomaly appeared in the ARC's lot, and imme-diately a herd of cattle-sized animals, albeit armed with tusks rather than fangs, rushed through it in a powerful and deadly charge.

Unfortunately for them, this was no Canadian wilderness, but rather a quite controlled environment; more precisely, an environment controlled by people, some of which armed with rather heavy weaponry – much more heavy than the one currently possessed by Becker or by his cohorts down in mountains' lowlands – and now these weapons were discharging, turning the charging animals into, well, dead and dying ones in a matter of minutes – and then it was over.

But on the other hand, Lester's harangue was getting starting. "Connor Temple," he began in a voice that implied that this harangue will be a long one, "when you said you have re-calibrated your manifestation device, I really thought-"

"It's not my fault exactly!" Connor interrupted him, then paused and blanched somewhat. "I really do believe that I have re-calibrated it exactly! Those animals – those dicynodonts – they belong in the Late Triassic, they couldn't be there right now!"

"Unless they were gated in already," Danny said slowly. "Lester, remember you've told us that Jenny had e-mailed you about dicynodonts in the airport, and how they were a mistake that Helen was very unlikely to do? Well, maybe Jenny's new opponent has repeated the same mistake twice, or is trying to apply the old mistake in a new way. Maybe we should try this technique a second time and see what'll happen – Connor?"

Connor, meanwhile, had stopped listening to Danny and Lester, and was instead fiddling with his device, where a new odd light was blinking on and off. "You won't believe it, but we're being jammed!" he exclaimed.

"Jammed?"

"Jammed in that location in time and space," Connor elaborated.

"But, but how-"

"With a right satellite issuing the right frequency," the clone repeated instead, "it can be done."

"And you know it how?" Lester frowned in suspicion, but even he did not expect the reaction that followed - the clone of Christine launched a monumental hysteria:

"I just, I just do," she snapped, as her eyes began to glimmer with some suspicious moisture, "I, I am not a human, I am a clone, a clone, I know what's been input into me when I was made, made, and I know it, I know it – no more and no less!" she stumped her foot and bunched her fists, quivering like a bomb that was ready to blow.

"Easy, easy now," Abby gently grabbed her by the left arm, "it's okay, it's all right, Lester's like that to us ordinary people as well-"

"He has never dissected any of you!"

"Only literally... verbally is another matter. Why won't go to the ARC's cafeteria and have a cup of tea?"

"And keep quiet? And not talk or ask questions at all?"

"Sure, uh – what is your name?"

"It's Christine Johnson. I'm her clone."

"Right, Christine, let's go."

"...what has just happened?" Connor spoke few moments later, after Abby had taken the clone off the field.

"Your friend is missing female company, what with Sarah and Jenny currently absent," Lester said calmly. "Temple, is your device-"

"Yes, it is – for now," Connor said firmly. "Lester, I think I will need some additional assistance. Can we go in and talk?"

* * *

The woman was almost at her goal, when she was blocked – by another hulk, but this one was different, it walked on two legs, for a start, and its' overall body plan was also more... more humanoid – it appeared somehow different from its' kin, and its' eyeless and earless muzzle had somewhat more human proportions as well.

"Hello, young man," the woman smiled, despite the absurdity at calling the hulk a young man. "I see you have travelled far, and I haven't quite reached your final goal yet."

The bipedal hulk just stood silently, inhaling through its big nostrils, and finally spoke:

"I know you... I knew you, once. Why haven't you stayed on your star?"

"Young man, we both know that you're sane enough to not believe in your beliefs when you want to," Helen said firmly, "and now is that time. So, let's put the mysticism aside and talk – now, or a bit later."

"No," the hulk shook its' head, "why should we? I am my own man now, and you have no power over my life anymore – I am free from the voices!"

The woman shook her head. "I see that you have completely got detached from reality, my lad, and this isn't the final stop yet. So, I ask you one more time-"

"I thought that I have remembered you, but I have not. This form is suitable for this time, but it has its' flaws. Yet, despite these flaws, you're different from the person I have talked with during the Ice Ages, you're not her. Leave now, or I will take you down."

"Hmm, I think not – I actually think that this will be amusing, defeating you _fairly_," the woman smiled. "You may have reached the end of your evolutionary path, or so you think, but so have I – maybe. So, let's see how you're fairing at this point – on guard!"

The hulk lashed with its front claw, trying to rip the woman to shreds, but... she wasn't there, but further on to the left. Naturally, he repeated it with his other forelimb, but now the woman was further on to the right. For several moments the woman and the hulk did this bizarre game of shadow-boxing, and then the woman brought out her knife.

"Well?" she spoke up suddenly, "aren't you going to say anything witty?"

In reply, the hulk lashed out with its' claw, even faster than before – and the knife's blade had penetrated his wrist. That caused a lull in the action, as the hulk just stared with its' eyeless head at the result, and finally spoke in the same tone as before:

"This is impossible – you're not human, this isn't metal."

"What do you know about humanity nowadays, lad?"

"I know how to kill them."

"...I was speaking rhetorically, but thanks for responding so quickly with the pain."

"What can't be cured must be endured – if you are human, then die!"

The strike of the second claw much faster than it had ever been before – but the woman dodged all the same, ripping the knife from the wrist and slicing through the hulk's neck, dropping it in its' tracks.

"Well," the woman said, as she wiped her blade and re-sheathed it, "I am impressed – but that is not enough. Let's hope that the finished product is more impressive... and I have a feeling that it will be." She smiled and went on into the building complex that had been guarded by the aberrant hulk.

The corpse, lying in her path, didn't answer.

_To be continued..._


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29**

**Guest from the future**  
_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures, unless noted otherwise.  
Note: this chapter contains some spoilers from the original series._

**Chapter twenty-nine**  
"What the Hell was that?" Lazrev exclaimed, and Sarah was happy to hear him – she was almost ready to do the same thing. "These animals, they were back in Calgary's airport, correct?"

"Yes, they were the dicynodonts of the same species," Becker nodded coolly, even though he was shaken just as much as Lazrev and others had been, and so that coolness cost him a lot of self-control, for which Sarah silently applauded him for that self-confidence. "However, that wasn't what you were going to ask me, was it, Lazrev?"

"No, the time anomaly-"

"Wasn't one of ours," Jenny replied before anyone else from the ARC could. "We didn't do it – we couldn't have done it: it's beyond our technological capabilities!"

"Then if it wasn't your people, who's left?" Lazrev was insistent.

"I don't know," Jenny admitted, "or rather – we don't know. However, they were on our side, because otherwise these animals would've run us down, and trampled many of us to death. I sincerely hope that whoever's did this will help us again."

"People – what is that?" Caroline's question wasn't particularly loud, but still pointed, so Jenny and others looked – and stared.

A genuine dinosaur – not a dicynodont, therapsid or ancient crocodile – was staring at them from the other side of barricades.

* * *

"Someone else has tried to come in."

"Impossible. This time is nowhere as far advanced, technology-wise."

"Perhaps. They cannot do anything to the jamming satellite anyways."

"But nothing else can be gated in as well."

"It is unnecessary – such methods proved to be inadequate before. This will be done as it was done earlier today, as it was done last night. Ammo storage has been renewed and we're a full strength."

"Something is in the air, though, something... incorrect."

"It doesn't matter. Tonight the humans die!"

"Yes. They will."

* * *

As a matter of fact, the dinosaur didn't appear to be too physically impressive at all: a gracile-looking reptile about the size of human, but more low-set, and with a long tail.

"It looks like a bird," Sarah whispered in awe, "and nothing like a giganotosaurus – or the stegosaurus from the Heathrow airport."

"Yes, it does," Caroline nodded, looking carefully at the gracile reptile, "but-"

Abruptly, the dinosaur froze, emitted a small chirp, and fled back into the woods.

"People, get down," Becker snarled, "something else is out there, something bigger-"

"No," Caroline said, as she hankered down next to her dog, "not so much as bigger, but numerous."

Several dozens of feral green eyes had lit up between the darkened trees, the rising moonlight glinted off the barrels of various firearms, taken from the bodies of the dead Mounties.

"People, they're here!"

* * *

The doorway into the complex – a complex that was rather familiar to the woman, it should be added – let into an equally familiar corridor, and then onwards, into the main chamber. However, unlike the past encounters, the visitor noticed with a rather detached curiosity that now both the corridor and the main chamber behind it were now in a much better condition, and showed signs of repeated usage and passing through. "Interesting, my lad," the woman purred, "you have been truly busy around these parts, I see, but what you have been busy with? Let's have a look-"

The woman entered the first main facility on the ground floor and stared in something approach-ing silent amazement – the formerly semi-derelict cloning complex was fully operational, and it was run by more than just several silent altered hulk creatures, each one a full copy of the rest, and not one happy by her appearance.

"You!" one of the hulk-clones growled, "you killed me!"

"My boy, right now, that death is just a pinprick on your scale," the woman smiled calmly, "but that will change, most probable."

"And what will happen if you die? Will that be just a prick on your scale?"

The woman smiled, and her teeth gleamed overly bright in the complex's fluorescent lights. "Aye, young man, you hit the matter on the head – what will happen if I were to die, again?"

"Again? You'll just come back to life then, eh?" one of the hulks suggested – and then sprung, without a warning, followed by the other clones.

The battle, it seems, was on.

_To be continued..._


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures unless noted otherwise._

**Chapter thirty**

The clones had emerged from the trees simultaneously, step-in-step by step, their unshod feet making surprisingly little sound on the littered forest floor, their eyes aglow, like giant fireflies... Someone whimpered, and Sarah wasn't sure that it wasn't her, because the appearance of their assailants was nothing like the assassin from the ROM.

From the waist up and until their heads, the newcomers resembled humans, although ones covered in shortish grey fur, with more muscle than a human frame could have born, and reaching to a greater height than any human could have reached – but the answer to that lay in their legs, which resembled the legs of a dog or a hyena, but proportionally thicker and muscular, covered in black and whitish stripes.  
Moreover, there was the tail feature – it was long, resembled a rat's tail, than a tail of a dog or a wolf or even a hyena, even if it was covered in short fur – and the face, now that resembled a hyena's, with the big, vaguely bat-shaped ears and short, thick and powerful jaws...from which protruded a pair of fangs, elongated into a pair of stabbing daggers.

"Great Lord!" Sarah heard someone whisper from the general direction of the ROM scientists, "these teeth – they match the toothmarks on the burnt corpse!"

Meanwhile, as these words were uttered, the assailants raised their right arms, in each of which gleamed a firearm.  
Well, that's the end of the line, Sarah muttered to herself, short of a miracle, now we're all going to die-

* * *

The hulks, despite their altered body plan, struck as fast as the originals, maybe even faster: al-most simultaneously, from different angles, with claws and jaws – there was no way that a mere knife could've deflected or countered all of the attacks at once.

And yet, that what happened precisely – the woman's knife whistled an intricate design through the air, slicing through the resilient flesh, skin and bone of the hulks as they reached out for her, and when they withdrew, only two remained standing out of four, and only one of them was mostly unhurt.

"Impossible!" the two hulks exclaimed as one being. "The speed, the strength – you're not human!"

"No, I am not something greater, not unlike you," the woman admitted, mock-coyly, "and it's about time that you realized, eh?" A silvery flame began flicker around her body's outline.

For several minutes the two hulks just stared at her without seeing (physically speaking, they had no eyes to begin with), and then they grinned an identical grin. "Time has no power over me, woman – the hulks will die only when killed: they're unnatural, and so, by extension, am I!"

"Oh, yes, I remember now that this is a feature that I have hated the most about this time," the woman grimaced. "Honestly, our descendants had really outdone themselves by the time they left, eh?"

"Oh?"

"Don't play coy with my, young man. I have seen the human evolution story from the beginning to end, and let me tell you here and now: throughout it, it was the humans' meanness, determina-tion and adaptability with resourcefulness that had shaped it. Otherwise, if our ancestors had lacked those qualities and instead opted for the homeostasis with nature option, they would've died out just like some of the biggest prehistoric beasts of that time – ancylotherium, deinotherium, even the greatest shark of them all, the megalodon. But we have made it throughout all of this, we survived and evolved to exist beyond nature... and in times that came, more precisely, the immediate past of these times, we were able to polish this ability to the extreme, and consequently, you and I are the only people left in this time, and neither of us truly belongs here-"

Suddenly, the two hulks lunged as one, claws and jaws spread wide. The woman jumped towards the wall, swinging her blade and decapitating one of them; then, as the second whirled around to attack her once more, she switched her hands and stabbed the other one too.

And then... there was laughter. The woman half turned away from the entrance and the four corpses, and found many more hulks, converging on her and herding her away from the other exit from the atrium, all ready and primed.

"Well now," the woman shook her head. "It looks like this fight will be a lot fairer than I thought."

* * *

The army of... werewolves or whatever these creatures were looked implacable and as relentless as a surging tide; the twinkle of moonlight on their weapons was cold, and their stares were inhuman. And then several light grenades were thrown, and both of the shotguns discharged at them, using the more heavy-calibre grapeshot.

The result was gory, to say the least. Some of the initial explosives were not real, but designed to produce light or sound when they exploded – a standard issue of the ARC, when dealing with animals easily spooked by bright lights or loud sounds. Other grenades, however, were of the real military issue, and even without the grapeshot, they would've made an impact on the enemy forces, and with the grapeshot...

Furthermore, as the explosion of light and sound faded, the human forces got partially behind their barricades and began to discharge their submachine guns into their stunned animalistic opponents, hoping that the latter really didn't need silver to be brought down for good – and were right. Over a quarter of the enemy's forces were down, but it wasn't anywhere near enough – and then the rest of the creatures charged before the people could reload, and Caroline released the dogs to assist the human forces, and things began to deteriorate very quickly and bloodily into a melee assault.

* * *

It was a scene, the woman noticed with some sort of morbid curiosity, not unlike from the Matrix™ movie – a veritable crowd of identical creatures on one end of the battlefield and a single person – namely her, armed with two knives, one from the Holocene, the other, its' blade thrumming with electricity, from the future – on the other, facing seemingly overwhelming odds.

Of course, not unlike the Matrix™ again, 'seemingly' here was the key word: probably not unlike her opponent, the woman had several tricks up her sleeve to even the odds, and ever since her impromptu apotheosis, these tricks had become ever stronger, as the clone army was about to find out: abruptly the woman disappeared from the sight of the security cameras – if there were any – from the hulks' field of vision – if they could see – and from the sight of anything and anyone else.

And the next moment, the army of hulk clones began to fight some unseen enemy instead.

_To be continued..._


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, all characters belong to Impossible Pictures.  
Note: the xenostelid belongs to the Dragon Magazine (3.5 Ed), and thus - not to me._

**Chapter thirty-one**

As it was deduced later by the survivors, the main reason why the fight with cloned...things went on in such a manner, was that despite a lack of formal training – unlike most of people and even dogs – the clones (and they had to be clones, for they were too identical to be anything else but) were simply bigger and stronger than humans or dogs, with faster reactions too, not to mention those formidable teeth...

Consequently, as soon as the clones charged, Becker and others immediately fled back, definitely not willing to match in machismo anyone or anything that towered more than head and shoulders over them to put it lightly... and the camp's more powerful projector lamps switched on, saturat-ing the area before the camp in some very powerful voltage. Admittedly, this has stunned the advancing monstrosities only slightly, but enough for the reserves of Lazrev and Muirkirk to get up from behind the fortifications and discharge their own weapons into the mob – and more of the monsters fell, but this time, they fired back, and their shots were efficiently lethal as usual, even without the benefit of sight: not only people, but the projector lamps went disabled, blasted to pieces.

Bereft of the blinding lights, the monsters began to advance – but by then Becker's men had re-loaded, and began to mow down the monsters once again, their superior weaponry winning the open fight. And then-

* * *

Freezing herself in time had been the woman's more favoured trick – by slipping out of the time stream, she was capable, as a rule, of doing anything she wanted, of altering anything she wanted as everyone and everything remained carried on by the flow of time and not worrying about any consequences or retaliation strikes, as a rule.

But this was proving to be an exception to the rule: the hulk clones' reactions were fast, as fast as lightning, and they almost could counter this trick of their opponent's – almost. For, despite all of their effort and determination, they still weren't good enough, though not for the lack of trying – they were good, but their opponent was better. And then –  
It was over.

The woman re-emerged back into the time stream and smiled:

"Looks like I'm winning!"

The next moment a huge creature, resembling at the same time a centipede, a spider, and a scor-pion crawled into the building, attracted to the smell of all those dead corpses. And then it briefly hesitated, as if catching a smell of something alive... but differently so from what it was used to, being present in the same space with her.

A grin faded on the woman's face, and stifling a curse instead, she turned around and quickly fled deeper into the building. Though she no longer could truly die, neither could the xenostelid, just like the hulks, as in this 'clash of the titans' the superior size – not speed or numbers – would be the key to victory, and defeat in this case would mean failure, and death of someone else, rather than the woman in question, but here personality struck a key:

The woman was no stranger to death or to failure, but after having achieved a chronological immortality for all intents and purposes, she had no intention of witnessing or experiencing either one ever again, and so she moved as fast as she could, up and into the building, while behind her the huge aberration proceeded to crunch through the dead hulks, sating its' everlasting hunger.

"The poor boy will certainly feel this pinch," the woman nodded and went upstairs.

* * *

Abruptly, the gunfire died down, and Sarah, for one, realized that there was no other sound ei-ther, and so she looked up (she had sort of huddled down into her tent once the cloned monsters began to fire back) and out of her hide-out and saw that the battle was indeed over, and the monsters were dead.

Unfortunately, so were several people, either shot in the head or chest, or bitten there, as one or two (well, more like two or three) of the monsters managed to avoid the worst of the bullets long enough to get over the barricades and into the camp... where Caroline had released the dogs. Al-though no match for the bipedal monsters – Sarah could already see several of the animals lying dead amongst the overall carnage as well – the dogs delayed the desperate creatures long enough for Becker and others to reload and finish them off as well.

Unexpectedly, Sarah felt something resembling a lot like hysterical giggles rising up from her chest...and then something hit her from the side – and licked her in the face.

"Michael! Sit!" Caroline's voice barked.

Sarah broke into hysterical giggles... and then, she heard a chirp.

* * *

Inside the room that the woman had ended up in, there were no signs of life, nothing but machines that seemed to be regulating – well, used to regulate until the huge arthropod decided to move in – all aspects of the building... and yet the woman did not appear to be disappointed, or confused, or lost. Instead, she walked over to one such a machine and smiled:

"Got you!"

And then her hands began to glow with silver flame, and she grasped the machine with those limbs of hers – and immediately the situation began to change.

* * *

"So, people, what's the verdict?" Abby asked as she joined the three men in Lester's office. "Can we start a time anomaly in our future and Sarah and Becker's present?"

"No, not until whatever there is will stop jamming our signal in that time zone," Connor said flatly. "Christine – I mean the clone – is right about that... has she said anything else?"

"No, she just sipped her tea and kept just staring silently," Abby shook her head. "It's downright freaky, when you think about – a completely familiar person at first, but then-"

The others nodded – a pre-programmed human being that knew only what it had downloaded to, and nothing more, apparently, was a disturbing thing to get used to, to say the least.

"You know, it's a good thing that Helen doesn't try to rig any more clones nowadays, the origi-nal ones were bad enough," Danny said slowly, "but at least with them you knew that something was wrong – this one behaves like a normal person, especially if you didn't know the original..." his voice trailed away. "All right, Lester what is it?"

"How do I know that you three are real and not the clones, grown from the genetic material col-lected from the skulls?" the chief of the ARC slowly asked. "I'm just curious, nothing more-"

Abby slapped him.

"Ow! Now that is the perfect way I would expect a clone to act-"

"Lester, probably even saint Augustine would begin to act this way once he spent more than fifteen minutes in your company," Abby began, but then the phone rang.

It was Jenny.

* * *

It was the gracile dinosaur from before that was now back, and it had brought friends and relatives alongside with it – at least half a dozen, but probably a bit more – and now, in that close company, it apparently felt quite a bit bolder than before, as it and its cohorts approached the now rather dishevelled barricade and began... to feed on the corpses with its' longish, graceful snout, occasionally exchanging a friendly chirp with its kind.

"Okay, this is simply surreal," Becker exchanged after a rather longish pause. "The dinosaurs – well, the meat-eating dinosaurs like the raptors – were supposed to be smart, while these guys are eating strange meat in a strange land like there's no tomorrow. Sarah, just what kind of a world was that Late Triassic time?"

"As a matter of fact," it was the scientific leader of the ROM team who answered instead, "the Late Triassic marked one of the mass extinctions in world's prehistory that in time would permit the dinosaurs to reach their domination in Jurassic and Cretaceous... still I assume that until that happened this band of dinosaurs was going through some very lean and hungry times before they came back to our time alongside with that mysteriously-vanished herd of dicynodonts... is there any way of capturing them?"

"In this moment of time, highly unlikely," Becker shook his head. "Our forces are in poor mental condition to be hunting such quick animals... maybe officer Muirkirk or your men could try their hand at it instead?"

The mentioned people looked at each other and shook their heads. "Highly unlikely – such small animals, with our projector lamps down, our ammo depleted and electricity supplies not so great..." Lazrev shook his head. "And speaking of highly unlikely – what's that?" he pointed to the sky, where something was falling down and burning up at the same time.

"A fallen star, I think," Becker said, uninterested, but then Sarah interrupted him:

"Hey, our connections are no longer jammed!"

That caused a reaction.

* * *

Meanwhile, many millions and millennia of years into the future, the woman was doing something to a machine, something that also involved burning, yet not physical, but chronological – she was burning away into time everything she didn't need (not so much aging but rejuvenating, if inorganic material could be considered rejuvenated), undoing the previous process of 'getting there' and reverting her subject from a clone-obsessed cyborg (to speak loosely) into a person who he once was – while down below the huge vermin was settling down for a rest: not an easy place to do such a delicate job.

And yet, it was done, as out of the silvery flames and lights of the chronologically reversed and altered materials emerged a young man, looking none too pleased with his forced and reversed metamorphosis. "We need to talk," he said crossly, and not very fearfully.

"Oh? Now you want to talk?"

Downstairs, the xenostelid rumbled, as it began to search for food anew.

"No, the vermin is in the way – or will be, shortly," the young man shook his head, his eyes drill-ing holes into his interlocutrix. "I assume that you have a way out of here that doesn't involve slipping past it?"

"Of course," the woman gestured, and a time anomaly appeared. "After you."

"How about we go in there simultaneously, Ms. Cutter?" the young man's face frowned in thought.

"Very good, but a bit outdated," the woman smiled, and grabbing the young man jumped into the time anomaly, just as the xenostelid burst through the chamber's floor.

_To be continued..._


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter thirty-two**

"Jenny!" Connor's voice sounded genuinely happy over the cell phone. "How are you? Are you not hurt?"

"No, just shaken, unlike many other people, most of the Mounties," Jenny sounded more emo-tionless than strained as she spoke. "How are things on your end?"

"Very good – well, not very: we're being jammed when we tried to contact you-"

"It was the same thing on our end, but not anymore, maybe you ought to try again," Jenny said, trying to go for the kindly tone of voice, and apparently succeeding. "At any rate, I just wanted to tell you that we've seemed to have dealt with the worst, killing the culprits and hopefully will be dealing with nothing more physically strenuous than cleaning-up duty as well as funerals."

"Funerals? Who's hurt?"

"Connor, funerals occur when people are dead," Jenny sounded almost hysterical. "And in this case it's mostly the Mounties – and when I say 'mostly', I mean by far," she hesitated. "Any-ways, Sarah'll be e-mailing you the pictures, and we'll contact as soon as electricity will become less of a commodity. Good night, and, oh, I – we - don't know what you have done to the dicynodonts, but, thanks, Connor, we owe you a big one."

"You're welcome-" Connor began but Jenny abruptly hanged-up: she didn't have time for nice-ties and she felt a mental break-down coming up.

* * *

"Well, that was abrupt," Connor said sheepishly, "I guess she's having a truly awful night, eh?"

"You think?" Lester's response was purely sarcasm, "and, oh, look we've just received Sarah's e-mail attachments of the photographs, and I must say..." Lester's voice trailed away and his eyes widened slightly when he saw the opened photos.

"What is it... what are those things, Connor?" Abby whispered quietly.

"I don't know!" Connor whispered back. "It looks almost human, but the teeth, those snarling teeth – they're more like hyenas of some sort, they're unnatural!"

"Aha, and we've already got something, well, someone downstairs, who isn't quite natural. Lorraine – go down to the cafeteria and tell our visitor to get up here for consultation-"

"No, I'll do it, thanks Lorraine," Abby quite got up and left, feeling more than a bit disturbed by those photos. "I'll be back in a jiff – hopefully."

"She won't be," Connor said knowingly, and then opened the next photo. "Okay, now I'm shocked even more."

"Is that a raptor?" Danny was also looking alongside Conner and Lester, and had to ask.

"No – me and Abby have seen raptors in person, remember? This dinosaur is different, and too scaly for one thing, which means that it's too primitive to be from the Cretaceous time period-"

"The animals that Sarah and others had encountered tended to be from the Triassic period, maybe it's the same story?"

"Oh! Well, in that case it's most likely to be a coelophysis or a related animal," Connor said smugly. "Now onto the next slide-"

* * *

Caroline was sitting, staring at the dogs sniffing cautiously at the dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs reciprocating in kind. Neither specie had ever a chance to see the other in their native habitat be-fore, and probably never will – one had become officially extinct, the other almost fully domesti-cated – and thus felt more curiously cautious that hostile towards each other.

Somebody sat down next to her. "Hello, Sarah," Caroline said without turning, "seriously, are you becoming obsessed with me or something?"

"How did you – never mind," Sarah replied. "Jenny is having a mental breakdown in our tent."

"And I am having one right here," Caroline didn't turn to face the other woman, "so can't you give me some privacy as well?"

Sarah flushed. "I, uh, uh," she fell silent and joined Caroline in watching the dogs continue to interact with dinosaurs, and felt the surreality of that situation, and wanted to ask Caroline about that, and half-turned around to face her better, and saw the other woman's face glistening with silent tears, and remembered something, and gave her a hug.

And that was when Caroline began to bawl her face off.

* * *

"Uh, Christine, are you done with the tea? We need to go upstairs and ask you some questions-"

"What makes you think I know the answers?"

"Because you've said something to that purpose before?"

"Right. Silly me. So what is it you wanted to ask me?"

"What would you call a creature that looks part human and part something else?"

"An advanced clone with some extra features, of course."

"What? Clones aren't that, clones are-"

"Silly Abby. Between your time, and the time of my creation, humans have achieved amazing technological advances, they became onto you not unlike gods, able of things you can only see in your dreams - or nightmares, like your friends in the field will have."

"No! This is wrong! This is-"

"Yes, it is – to you. Maybe to others. Maybe in time you will either defy it and change the future, or accept it as it is. Either way, your beef is with Helen Cutter, not me." The clone of Christine Johnson abruptly got up. "Now come on, silly Abby, let's go and talk with that Lester."

"Please don't call me that!"

"As you wish, mistress."

Abby face-palmed. "Don't call me that either!"

* * *

The land was covered in a lush, broadleaf, deciduous forest, where a herd of 'furry elephants' browsed nonchalantly.

"When and where are we?" Helen's companion asked her quietly.

"Twelve thousand years ago, in the future US state of New York," Helen replied and turned to her interlocutor. "Mr. Flint, it's time that we had a talk."

_To be continued..._


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter 33**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter thirty-three**

For several moments Sarah held the bawling Caroline, until the latter stopped crying and blew her nose loudly on a handkerchief.

"Thanks. Sorry about the display, guess it just took time to hit me right and proper."

"Don't mention it, now about Jenny – she's probably having one of her own in a tent right now-"

"Jenny's made of sterner stuff and she has faced monsters from the future before-"

"When... right, stupid question, dumb memory."

"Yes, yes... do you currently have a feeling that all you want is lay down like a punctured balloon and wait for the whole thing to be over?"

"That's how Ancona Muirkirk feels – or, rather, started to feel since we got back from the mountainside yesterday," Becker walked over to his team-mates, "I guess she just had worse self-control than you. Anyways, can we get Jenny out here? We've contacted Winters, and Muirkirk's boss, and few other people, and Jenny's PR expertise will be really required now."

"I'll get her, then," Caroline got up, putting away her handkerchief. "Will be back in a jiff!"

Sarah and Becker exchanged glances. "That was fast-" Sarah began, but then one of the dinosaurs came over from her back and chirped over her ear, startling her, badly. In the commotion that resulted from this event, Caroline's oddly quick recovery was forgotten.

* * *

"You want to offer me a job?" the young man's eyes widened incredulously. "What sort of a job?"

"As an assistant manager, with me being the manager," Helen shrugged calmly. "Young man, it's not that you lack imagination that is so necessary for your promotion, it's just that you still need therapy – a lot of it. Tell me, what were you thinking, when you were doing this to yourself?"

"It was a two-prong plan, really," Flint shrugged. "One on hand, my loneliness would end, and on the other, the voices would end, and on the third-"

"So it's a three-prong plan, then?"

"All right, so the details were never my strong suit. Why did you stop me – not because I was sloppy, well, not exactly?"

"Because, young man, you would nave have succeeded anyways," Helen said calmly. "You have imagination, but not the broader vision, you either just wander around, doing nothing and killing things – and people – or you concoct a more elaborate scheme...which amounts to the same thing – killing people and everything else. Haven't you had your fill of death and murder?"

"And have you had your fill of megalomania?"

Helen grinned, and the grin was more than a bit predatory. "Perhaps, perhaps not. But I am the one who had come on top of our interaction, so I am the one asking for answers – well?"

"As someone used to tell me, don't argue with a woman, because she'll make you look stupid anyhow," Flint shrugged. "I am in, I suppose. So, what would you have me do?"

"For now we wait, for soon it'll be time to act," Helen grinned. "And by wait I mean observe the giant short-faced bear interact with that mastodon herd. Take a look and learn proper patience, young man!"

And that's what they did.

* * *

Meanwhile, twelve thousand years later in the present, several more helicopters were landing at the smallish airfield at the Mackenzie Mountains, and the people who emerged from them mostly wore the Mounties' uniforms, and their faces were grim.

Colonel Winters was the first to emerge from the first helicopter. Unfortunately, when he saw Culver looking at him from a body bag (Becker and Lazrev had began to bring the deceased back to the camp, figuring out that it was more appropriate than to just leave them there), he turned red and he fell backwards, clearly developing some sort of a mental breakdown – and that was just the beginning.

The next – or rather the first big bone of content came when Winters' second-in command saw the gracile-looking dinosaurs running around the campsite, and generally staying next to Caro-line's dogs. Immediately, the rocky-faced woman ordered them to be shot, which provoked an immediate negative reaction among several people, from Caroline Steele – who misunderstood that the order for shooting potentially regarded the dogs – to the ROM people, who claimed that the animals were property of the Canadian government in their persons, and thus the RCMP had no right to decide their fate just like that... The cocktail of aggression, irritation, mutual antipathy and similar negative emotions saturated by misunderstandings almost brought the whole group to violence, and it took Jenny a lot of smooth talking (and also a lot of self-control) from preventing the whole campsite deteriorating into shooting and physical violence – but she managed.

"Once this whole thing is over," Sarah muttered to Becker, "I'm going to ask Lester for some sort of a personal ARC medal or something – and you?"

Becker nodded in agreement. The monstrous guests from the future might have come and gone, but their troubles in the travels abroad were just beginning to end.

_To be continued..._


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters, unless noted otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures.  
Note: Some of the dates mentioned in this chapter were "loaned" from Dougal Dixon's book 'Anthropology of the future'._

**Chapter thirty-four**

As time went on, the downsizing of the ARC's importance – not that its' staff minded too much – developed on further during the ride back to Calgary: for one thing, it was taking place in sev-eral trucks, albeit high-speed military trucks, but after airplanes and even helicopters it was still downsizing, and Sarah told so Becker.

"What did you expect?" the chief of the ARC's Special Forces shrugged, looking not overly upset about it. "The Canadian government slash military had finally stepped in, the wheels of bu-reaucracy are starting to roll, the sense of national patriotism is up in arms, and nobody wants to group of British forces paraded too obviously now that the hard work's done."

"And you're so happy about it because-?"

"I'm homesick, Sarah, I just want to get out of here and fly back to London as fast as we can, without, hopefully, another dinosaur appearing there in place of the first one – remember the stegosaurus?"

Sarah grinned. "Yeah, it all seems so simple in the hindsight: just stop a multi-ton animal, without any politics to worry about."

"Yeah, speaking about worrying politics, what about Jenny Lewis?"

"What about her?"

"Think she'll go on being a full time member?"

"We talked while you were searching for Culver, and honestly, I don't think that she wants to."

"Well, I can't for one say that I blame her – on her last day before leaving, she almost got eaten by a fungus from the future, and now she could've gotten killed as well, so I am not surprised that at best she wants to remain a reservist in the ARC's enterprise." He saw Sarah's crestfallen look and added, as a consolation: "Look, Lester will probably keep her on as a reservist or some-thing, just in case a good PR consultation is needed – cheaply, for Lester is just a bit cheap, you know?"

"Right," nodded Sarah.

"I see," spoke Sarah.

"I am going to Jenny-"

"She's riding with Caroline and the dogs and the dinosaurs in another truck. I think the two wanted to talk since morning. Best let them."

"Oh!" spoke Sarah. "I see."

* * *

_Several months ago..._

"Hello Miss Jenny, let me tell you a story about what's going on in the basement now that you've come here.

"You see, humanity has always experienced evolution on speed – less than four million years have come and gone, and your ancestors have become you, even literally speaking. And now, imagine how this trend will proceed with all this lovely new technology being developed and patented on an almost daily basis.

"Oh, you mean you have no idea? Well then, let me give you the low-down. In roughly two or three centuries to come, humanity will master genetic manipulation to unbelievable levels - levels that will reach higher and higher, as centuries and millennia go by, until in five or six centuries from this day hence, humanity will be living alongside several other sentient races, all of which created by it via genetic manipulation.

"At the same time, of course, other technological advances will be made – humanity will be able to reach everywhere, from the unfathomable depths of the ocean to the moons of Saturn and the surface of Venus. It'll be everywhere, ushering a golden age – for itself, not for the artificial races, and will, of course, breach the walls of time with the intelligent consumption that can be considered its trademark. However, time travel isn't very profitable from the point of view of commercial consumerism, and so it will be left wildly alone, for the best or worst.

"Meanwhile, the golden age would reach an eventual sunset – roughly in five thousand years since it began. Humanity would turn upon each other with a relish that it haven't felt since its' distant ancestors battled the erectus and the Neanderthal for the dominance over the planet, and within another five thousand humanity would become extinct.

"That's right, Miss Lewis, extinct – just like, say, the woolly mammoth or the dodo or the dinosaurs. Humanity will be all gone, save for those people who went to live in different times, in past or the future, and became different types of humans' altogether, socially speaking at least.

"But that left all the other, artificially created races, as well as other creatures, which weren't as social numerous, or as humanoid, to be considered races or civilized, yet who were intelligent all the same. In time – say forty thousand or fifty thousand, they began to carve out their own do-mains, resembling those of your social past – slave ownership, feudalism, fixed social hierarchy, you know the drill. That will create a lot of social malcontent, especially among the lower social classes and the weaker specimens.

"Meanwhile, humans who adapted to time travel will continue to visit those times occasionally, until one of them met a friendlier, smarter, weaker specimen of the native races, who asked her – I mean the human – a question: _Are you a _jinni?

"And the human replied: _You can say that. Why do you need a _jinni _anyways?_ Jin _are tricksters, after all._

"And the other replied: _I want to be a better thane than my foremother – I want to be a great leader!_

"And the human replied: _I can do that – I can lead you and your allies into a time where you will become a great leader for your people, if you accept my conditions._

"And the other replied: _What conditions are those?_

"And the human replied: _Not just your race, but other races, including the ones with whom you're currently warring, will come along as a challenge for your rule. If you really are as great and smart and powerful as you assume yourself to be, you will subjugate them peacefully, and make them your allies, and together you will carve a new place for yourself. That is my condition._

"And the other accepted, and assembled her people, and followed the human into the humanity's past and there it and its' people carved a niche for itself, and once or twice other races from their time came to challenge them, but their leader managed to defeat the challengers and assimilate them, while always – always – seeking a way to rise to the top of their new domain, and in time – time is the question but the one with its' own answer – the leader knew that they would be able to come to the humans and reveal themselves for what they were and go on from there.

"And now, Miss Lewis, you're our test human. What do you feel and comprehend?"

_Now..._

"Jenny – give one good, yet non-obvious reason why I shouldn't follow up on my plan and give Jackie and others the call about the situation in Canada and the lungfish in ROM?"

"Look – please give me a chance to persuade Lester. I promise you that if he doesn't agree to co-operate, I'll sign onto your crazy plan to conquer Canada myself!"

"Done!"

_To be continued..._


	35. Chapter 35

**Chapter 35**

**Guest from the future**

_Disclaimer: All characters, unless noted otherwise, belong to Impossible Pictures._

**Chapter thirty-five**

"Well, Abby Maitland, you certainly took your time getting up here with your guest, and what's with the gloomy look on your face?"

"Oh, I was just telling her that in several centuries her descendants will build starships and other extraordinary vehicles," the clone of Christine Johnson replied emotionlessly. "She just took it the wrong way, that is all."

"You told me that people were altering each other's genetic structure-"

"Of course they were – cloning, cybernetic, genetic modification: if the public demands it, it will be done. Only it's not 'were' – it 'will be': try to keep your tenses in proper order-"

"There she goes again-"

"Abby, look," Connor said slowly. "We're all tense here when dealing with Ms. Johnson-clone over here, but we need her to answer some of the questions."

"Then let me set the tone by telling you that Helen Cutter told me to tell you that since you dis-suaded her from destroying the world, she will be placing the power onto the ARC regarding the future of human social and biological evolution – and let me tell you, she probably meant it metaphorically only in part."

"What is she talking about?" Abby exploded.

"Well," Connor said weakly, "the adjustments to my time anomaly device for a start. Abby, can you think what would've happened if the original Christine Johnson had learned about this sort of deviation from the original?"

"Alternatively," Lester spoke, "think about it thusly: we almost sent several armed soldiers – and more than just 'several' into a foreign country without any clearance. This can be considered a declaration of war, or at least technological superiority."

"Finally," the clone smiled in a way very similar to the original's, "think if you send those men not to several hours in the future, but, say, September 10, 2001, with some very specific orders towards very specific people?" Without waiting for Abby's response, she sat down.

So did Abby, into another one. "Please don't smile at me like that," she muttered faintly to the clone as she turned to her friends. "Just what are we going to do about it? I mean, we can't just ignore it, 'cause it won't go away on its own-"

Before anyone else could reply, the time anomaly alarms resonated throughout the building.

"Sir!" Lorraine burst into Lester's office. "Remember the time anomaly in the kitchen? From which Mr. Quinn and his cohorts returned to us? It had opened again and an armadillo the size of a small car had walked through it! Can something be done about it?"

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Lester spoke to Danny and others. "Please try to get rid of it at least, will you? The good old days aren't as gone as they appear to be, Abby Maitland."

Without a word Abby and the others went downstairs – something clearly haven't changed as much as they thought they would.

* * *

"Ooh! I am all stiff from the airplane seat – they've spared us no expense in getting rid of us, eh?" Becker turned to Jenny with a small laugh. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I have flown for twelve hours straight in a row," Jenny said with a yawn, "and Lester, the trademark character that he is, suggested that they might be late – another animal out of time, something like a bleeping armadillo or something!"

"Great! We now will have to get there by our own steam – at least there aren't any dinosaurs in the neighbourhood-" Becker began, but Caroline interrupted him, suddenly:

"Or how about I give Jackie a call and she'll rustle up some transportation for us? She is due for a vacation anyways, she might as well get to the airport in style."

"In other words," Jenny gave Caroline a very harsh look "you told her to come to the airport all the same?"

"Now Jenny, you and I have agreed back in Calgary that-"

"Just a moment, you two, I have some things to say myself," Sarah said firmly. "Firstly, Jenny, I'm sorry for the talk we had back at the mountainside: we really had no right of making things get on such a personal level: each one of us has their own personal life to which they're entitled to live however they want – so I'm sorry about trying to make you adhere to my beliefs."

"Sarah, please," Jenny sighed, as she shook her head. "You just stood up for your beliefs, so it's cool – is that Lester?"  
It was, and he was accompanied by several of Becker's underlings, but not Danny or Connor and Abby. "Sorry about this," he said without looking very sorry at all, "but Danny and the others are busy cleaning up after a giant armadillo, so we'll have to make it there on our own: the traffic here is murder-"

It was when that they appeared – monstrous humanoids easily taller than even the cloned monstrosities they encountered back at the Mackenzie Mountains: some yellow with black spots and horned ridges on their heads, some in green and white stripes with snake tails for legs and occasional wings on their shoulders, and some resembling gargoyles, all winged, with skins of black or dark grey colour.

"Now then," Jenny said calmly, "the ones in the center are the _sar_, Caroline's people – " Caroline smiled, exhaled, and her limbs grew to the height closer to the height of the newcomers, even if still on the shorter end of the height scale.

" – the ones on the left are _saur_, Jackie's people – " Jackie, Caroline's blonde assistant emerged, from the snake-tailed crowd, a forked tongue flickering between her own lips.

" – and the ones on the right are the _byak_, they don't have a leader but they have a share as well," Jenny finished guiltily. "They're all, basically, political immigrants from the far-off future and want to have legal rights and the whole package." She paused. "As their spokesperson, I, uh, want to tell you that they're approaching the ARC with their petition because they think that it is the most appropriate place in her majesty's bureaucracy regarding their situation."

"Of course," Lester groaned, "anything else?"

"We'd really rather go through legal channels than illegal," Caroline said, smiling with teeth that appeared to be capable of cracking skulls like eggs. "And by 'illegal' we mean repeating the tactic of your previous guest from the future and conquering the world starting with Canada. Any questions?"

"No," Lester shook his head, "just follow me back to the ARC. Hopefully, Danny and others have finished dealing with the giant armadillo and we'll be able to deal with the problem with the full brainstorm."

With those words James Lester, bureaucrat and ARC leader, having made the fateful choice, walked from the airport and towards the ARC...and towards the new chapter in the life of the ARC's role of existence.

_End._


End file.
